Adelene da soul poet talks as if she's sitting across from you at your kitchen table. You listen. Soon you realize she's slid into a poem, and you're still listening. She's engaged with her audience, speaking her truths.
"I like the stage," said Adelene, who performs her poetry in a rich voice, the consistency of a double latté with whipped cream. "Sometimes when I'm on stage, I have no idea what's going to come out of my mouth."
Adelene (aka Bertha Clark) commutes to her transit job in West Vancouver when she's not on stage. Her heritage can be traced through her great-great-grandparents, one of the pioneering black families who settled on Saltspring Island. Although Adelene was born in San Francisco, she moved to Vancouver when she was a child, and she often visited her grandmother's after-hours restaurant to listen to jazz greats performing. She started rhyming at an early age, and her family dubbed her the story teller.
The soul poet was the featured attraction at a fundraising poetry café last week in the Arts Building in Gibsons. Wendy Crumpler opened the show with her own poetry and spoke about the power of the word. Adelene's poems covered the big themes: honouring the matriarchs in her family, friendship, spiritual power, ancestors and justice for all people to live on their own land.
"I want the audience to know that they're not the only ones feeling like this," she said. "If I feel it, a lot of people feel it."
One of her poems was about the day that Martin Luther King died. She recalls that she was sent home from third grade because of the tragedy.
"His name was Martin / Sweet li'l black child / And he helped you today / Live a different lifestyle," her mother told her.
For the past 10 years, Adelene has been giving limited performances: with Jean Pierre Makosso for Black History month and in the recent play by Robert MacDonald, The Writer. But this seems to be her breakthrough year. She's also self-published a book, You Have Reached Adelene da soul poet, that will be available for $17 at her gigs and through her website: www.adelenedasoulpoet.com. The poems have not been prettied by an editor; they are written in her natural idiomatic speech. She intends the book to appeal to all ages and types of people, for example, to a teenager driving his first car: "Hey g g-man / you got somewhere to go / you make sure you get there / you take it slow." Another poem shows solidarity with middle aged sisters - it's entitled The Night Sweat.
Hearing poetry read aloud with the passion of the poet makes a difference. At the Poetry Café, Ross Harry read his own work mostly about his family; Graham Walker entertained with a few verses from his children's book; and Sheila Weaver read a poem by her mother about London in 1940 followed by her own penned response to it years later. Martha Royea spoke her poetry in exquisitely chosen words that also explored large themes. Susan Telfer read from her book, House Beneath, and asked the audience to look out for other evenings of poetry coming soon from the Gibsons Live Poets Society.
Adelene is appearing again on Sunday, Feb. 20, at 7 p.m. at Benjamin's Restaurant in Gibsons, along with actor David Short and pianist Ken Dalgleish. All are welcome - poet or not.
