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Take a Trip With IBéStephanie Jones Author Ibe’ is a Jerome/ SASE Verve Grant recipient, member of the MN Spoken Word Association, and well known spoken word artist. He recently released his much anticipated first book of poetry entitled “Bridge Across the Atlantic”. If you haven’t heard him perform one of his pieces, you are missing out, but read one verse of his poetry and you’ll yearn for more. His rhythmic delivery leaps from the pages and you are right there with him on the west coast of Sierra Leone. Born in Guinea, spent most of his childhood in Koindu, Sierra Leone, Ibe' traveled to the US at the age of fifteen to further his education. Although he holds a degree in business computer information systems from St. Cloud University, he is a story teller, forever in love with spoken and written word. H7-oct-08ed with hurt, love, joy and arrival. Bridge Across the Atlantic takes readers on a journey of being an African in America. Dealing with INS, immigration and relatives asking for money to “help feed a family back home” on top of being a black man in America. The experiences are not exclusive to African immigrants, but they will resound loudest for those who have experienced life in an African country and are now navigating through survival here. His poems dip and dive on a variety of topics, like a good CD there is a track for every mood, something for everyone to relate to. This book will cause you to stop, think and maybe see things from a different perspective. His poems speak of black love, self-love, self respect and pay homage to black women on both sides of the Atlantic. From the 4 year old girl who pretends to have long, silky hair in order to be a princess, he calls out Barbie and Disney stories as “instruments of self-erosion”. He strikes a blow back at abusers in Superman, for a Day, with lines like “If I were Superman/ An abusive husband would wear dark sunglasses to hide a black eye/Cos last night when he raised his fist to hit his wife/His blow landed on his own eye. Ibe` is a man well versed in literature and history, a man never to busy to “cultivate a good idea, to stop and digest it”. He encourages others to get on the mic and express themselves freely through the intimate genre of poetry. In addition to writing and hosting his own open mic Ibe’, through the Givens foundation, holds workshops and artist residencies for young adults at high schools and middle schools throughout the metro area. He shares this advice for aspiring poets, “Be honest. Be prolific. Write until you right all of your mistakes. He encourages writers not to be easily satisfied, edit and look at their work from many angles. Pick up a copy and take this journey with him across the Atlantic because, “We are all immigrants/Some more recent than others/ No matter/We’re all American.”
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