By Molly Ashline, Staff Writer

An exhibition of local talent graced the Alexander Room of the Elliot University Center on the first night of the Conference on African American Culture and Experience (CACE) last week.

The poetry café followed the opening panels. Mr. Demetrius Noble from the African American and African Diaspora Studies (AADS) program was both a performer and a moderator for the poetry café.

Noble performed a couple of powerful pieces at the beginning of the poetry café. They were spoken word responses to the recent deaths and to the Black Lives Matter Campaign.

He was followed by Elliott Axiom who is a Greensboro middle school teacher and spoken word performer. Axiom embodied multiple characters with his spoken word performances.

Poet4Justice Keisha McKane also performed spoken word.

“I’ve been running from this for a long time, and I was never happy because something was missing,” said McKane while speaking briefly about her drive to be an artist in the community.

All of the pieces performed had some political or cultural message that underlined the purpose of CACE and AADS.

The poetry café featured students as well as community members.

Well-Versed Expressions is a group of four students who perform spoken word. They performed the same piece they presented to author Sonia Sanchez upon her visit to UNCG. The piece was called, “Something’s in the Way of Things.”

“We thought we shook the chains off our ankles when the zero in our bank accounts turned to zeros, but our chains are still there. We just dipped them in gold and placed them around our necks,” was one of the powerful lines from that performance.

Dr. Tara Green, the head of AADS, attended the Poetry Café, and she was interested in the audience seeing the connection between the poems and songs heard and the point of CACE. She wanted to hear from the artists about “the relationship between creative arts and social justice.”

“Music, poetry, art has been…at the forefront of social change, and I think the reason for that is generally the artists are truly the people,” said Axiom.

He continued by talking about the emotion that goes into the work artists do.

“That work may not change everything…but will inspire the individuals who will change,” he said.

Laila Nur was another artist who attended the poetry café. She sang three politically charged songs and spoke on the topic of political art.

“I feel like especially living in a very capitalist, imperialist world…we’ve got systems that are constantly breaking things down, and, on the opposite side of that, art is constantly creating, so, for me, art is a form of activism,” said Nur.

CACE continued the next day with multiple panels and lectures. Topics the second day of CACE ranged from gender issues to black identity to the international diaspora and more.