Motion in Poetry
by Motion

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

original publication: Amazon.ca : Editorial Reviews