A.A.C.'s Poetry Jams at Blackbird Coffee Featuring: Life

Once a month A.A.C. hosts a poetry jam at Blackbird coffee in Milledgeville, Ga. Our most recent feature poet was Life, a dynamic poet from Athens, GA. by way of Brooklyn NY. Check out his poem "Numerical Prison." For more info about Life visit http://www.myspace.com/lionslifecom

A.A.C.'s Founder Paul Ayo performs his new piece "Melanin in the Sun" at Magnifying the Moment in Milledgeville, GA. Check this one out.

A.A.C. Poetry Jams

A.A.C. is continuing its mission to educate, inspire, and entertain, by bringing a series of poetic talent to Milledgeville, Ga. unlike any that has graced the town before. In the following interview, we have Al Corum after his feature set at Blackbird Coffee. He has some important words of wisdom for up and coming poets or anyone with a dream.

The Season of Change

The mission to educate, inspire, and entertain is climbing to new heights in 2010.

What’s in store?

A.A.C. is kicking off the year with a visit to Augusta, Ga.’s MLK Day Parade and a visit to an MLK Day of Service event at the Lyndon House Art Center hosted by William Montu Miller in Athens, Ga.

January 20, 2010, we’ll host our first Open Mic Poetry Jam at Blackbird Coffee, Milledgeville. The evening will feature poet extraordinaire Al Corum headlining the poetic line-up.

In February, we’ll give you a double dose of feature poetry nights with the Poet/Activist, Life, author of the book, The Tree of Life. The double dose will finish up with a special guest poet that is guaranteed to stimulate your poetic juices.

We’ve also chosen February as the month for our Worth a Thousand Words Campaign. GCSU Students, Faculty, Staff, or anyone who is interested will be asked to take a picture with someone they don’t know, write a caption for the photo, and send it to us at A.A.C. The person who takes the winning photo will receive $50.00 and the photos will be presented at an exhibition March 15, 2010.

And speaking of March, March 17 we will host The Brawl, Milledgeville’s first team Poetry Slam at Blackbird Coffee. All proceeds from the event will go to the School for School’s chapter at GCSU.

And last but not least, the finale!

The Poetic Notions Youth Poetry slam will be returning to Milledgeville, bringing you Middle Georgia’s finest teen poets. And the event you’ve all been waiting for, Poetic Notions 2010 will close out the season of change with a feature line up guaranteed to leave you breathless.

We look forward to shutting your city down!!!

A.A.C.'s New Blog

Of course you know, Art as an Agent for Change works its hardest to bring you the best Art for Change in the world. To do this in a more convenient and less confusing way, we bring you our new blog address, A.A.C. Shutdown. We'll be posting new stories about our endeavors and covering the work of other artists who are reshaping the world just like us. So, subscribe today and stay updated on our collective quest to make this world a better place. Art-- it's what you make out of this crazy world!

A.A.C.'s End of the Year Review

This year has been quite the adventure. A.A.C. has been to Columbus, Americus, Poetic Soul in Athens, First Friday in Augusta, and the 567 in Macon. We’ve found out how “Bootyful” the world is with Avital Levy, featured in a Rock Concert, hosted our first series of Poetry Jams at Blackbird Coffee, and showcased the talents of Christopher K.P. Brown and Tanesha Douglas at Majors and Minors.

We’ve built bridges with Tim Franzen and the Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition and Ayman Fadel of the CSRA Peace Alliance. We took a trip down to Columbus and performed at the SOA watch. And we made a PSA at the Be the Change Youth Convergence. We also had the esteem honor of working with a talented group of young men from the African American Male Initiative. You can check out their video below, it’s amazing.




1. A.A.C. at AAMI Early College
2. A.A.C. at Be the Change

A.A.C. also produced its first DVD, Poetic Notions 2009 and crowned 2009’s poet(s) of the Year, Perfect Dissonance. http://www.youtube.com/user/emptyhand75#p/u/7/ofEux5t61vQ


Finally, we finished up with GCSU’s 2009 Kwanzaa Celebration.The year has been great. The group is growing and we have a talented new crop of young Poet/Activists living the mission to educate, inspire, and entertain.



Next year, we have two tours in the works and Poetic Notions will be bigger and better than ever. We’ve also got our “Don’t just Talk about It, Walk about It” Campaign and we’ll also try to build some inter-student bridges at GCSU with the “Worth a Thousand Words” Project.

The pursuit of a better world has to start somewhere, let it start with Art. It’s what you make.