On November 19, 2011, the Charlotte Comfort Auditorium was filled with inspiring speakers and an awe-struck audience for the second annual TedxYouthDay at Hewitt. Among the many powerful speakers were poet Lauren “Lo” Anderson, whom I featured in a Hewitt Times article last year about our inaugural TedxYouth@Hewitt event, and Ashley “Ajay” Johnson, a local, self-published poet. Both hail from Urban Word NYC. These down-to-earth women put on passionate performances interspersed with thought-provoking verses, from Lo’s comparison of a rapper’s musical bars to the physical bars of a prison cell to Ajay’s claim that “mirrors are just windows with opinions.”
Both poets currently hold leadership positions in agencies focused on the development of poetic literacy. Lo is co-president of Urban Word NYC’s World Wide, a youth board responsible for creating and carrying out projects in support of spoken word poetry geared toward young people across New York City. Ajay is the founder and “general” of the “army” evoLution NYC, which strives to assist not only performers, but also visual artists, and to promote self-sufficiency. In addition, Ajay has written a collection of poetry entitled Love and Other Black Magicks, which she previewed at TEDxYouth@Hewitt with her enchanting reading of “Humans Are Holy Too.
I had the wonderful opportunity of interviewing Lo and Ajay at the end of TedxYouth Day; the good humor and kindness they displayed beforehand, along with their lovely friendship evident in the video below, made me even more excited to conduct this interview. Lo and Ajay answered my questions with the utmost honesty and thoughtfulness indicative of admirable women who truly believe in the power of what they do.