climbing poeTree in Poughkeepsie

Alixa Garcia and Naima Penniman—the tag-team, two-spirited, boundary-breaking artist duo,
Climbing PoeTree—have advanced what it means to be renaissance women. Poets, performers,
print-makers, dancers, educators, bookmakers, muralists, designers, and new media artists, these
janes-of-all-trades prove that you can be masterful in multiples. With roots in Haiti and Colombia,
Alixa and Naima reside in Brooklyn and track footprints across the country and globe on a mission
to overcome destruction with creativity. In a nutshell, Climbing PoeTree is a queer-feminist soul-
sister co-conspiracy of acrobatic poets who moonlight as street artists and infiltrate public schools
and prisons with infectious ideas of how people can shape their own destinies.




Each with her own impressive background in performing, teaching, and activism, Alixa and
Naima made their debut as a duo in July of 2003, when they launched a four-month tour across
the nation with a riveting multi-media dance and poetry performance about the effects of the War
on Drugs on the people of America's ghettos and Colombia's farmlands. In its premier year,
Climbing PoeTree also released its first album Stethescope, and founded Fashion Statement,
their sought-after line of silk-screened clothing.

In 2004, Alixa and Naima joined the Blackout Arts Collective and combined forces with like-
minded artists, activists, and educators of color who believe in the transformative power of art to
affect change in their communities. Climbing PoeTree propelled Blackout's 2004 and 2005
Lyrics on Lockdown tours, conducting workshops and headlining performances in and outside of
prisons. In 2004, Alixa and Naima also began co-teaching poetry, visual arts, break-dancing, and
leadership classes to youth through the Incarcerated Mother's Program and New York City
school system, which would launch them into a fertile career as resident artists and guest
facilitators at schools, youth programs, and juvenile correctional institutions across NYC and the
nation. Among many highlights of 2004, Naima was a featured poet and panelist alongside Sonia
Sanchez and Jessica Care Moore at the National Spoken Word Symposium in Iowa City, and
Alixa was chosen as the "Ground Breaking" poet to represent the U.S. in a televised cultural
exchange hosted in South Africa by LoveLife. Other televised appearances include HBO's Def
Poetry Jam and BET's The Next.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Alixa
• Garcia
• Naima
• Penniman
• doerrier
• hudson
• valley
• cunneen
• hackett
• poughkeepsie

[PoetryETrain]

Thanks, this has been added to our playlists here, and on facebook...

[heyteach845]

It's slam poetry. or floetry...

[onionhead007]

First comment in a year...

Good video nice poetry imo.

[rainbowpagun]

wow that moved me ilove you too

[CvP]

*snaps*

Flowing gracefully through each enunciation, they've captured my heart.

[EcricircE]

everything about them is beautiful.

[alicefazooli]

what's the name of this poetry?

[xena9287]

they are amazing!