Motion in Poetry by George Elliott Clarke (Foreword), Motion (Author) Paperback - 172 pages (May 2002) Editorial Reviews Amazon.ca Wendy Brathwaite, a.k.a. Motion, is a happening spoken word/hip-hop artist and radio personality whose lyrics flow live and direct, with intellect. Her debut collection, Motion in Poetry, even exceeds the hype set off by George Elliot Clarke's ebullient foreword. Motion's own intro confesses a "passion for music and words expressed on the page, the airwaves and stage," and in "In Motion" she extrapolates about having "been seeded with a gene that has me fiending to rhyme." Fierce, wry, and always passionate, Motion astutely encapsulates black realities in the Greater Toronto Area. "Midnite" outs black-on-black violence and its demoralizing "sure death for any witness," but it's the cops on trial in "Street Signs": "To keep your health you must drive real slowly / The beast man will hold me.... Laughing in the cruiser / Debating should we shoot her?" Motion is also sexually raw ("March 11"), tender ("Girl"), and, in "Write a Culturally Specific Haiku with Internal Rhyme," playful: "Bathurst first--then run / Pon Eglinton. Stand and stare. / Black/Brown faces there." But like any MC the braggadocio is never far away, as "Knowledge Wisdom and Overstanding" boasts: "They demise in they depravity / Hip Hop has got a hole / and I was born to fill the cavity." Exuding pure girl-power, Motion's poetic potion is topical, accessible--and not fronting y'all. --Sigcino Moyo About the Author Wendy Brathwaite is a Spoken Word poet and Hip Hop artist in Canada. She is an ambassador for literacy. This is her first volume of poetry. It is not, however, her first publication. She has released two singles and a vinyl EP and has been published extensively on C.D. anthologies. She has also published a collection of her poems in a Chap Book.

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