MOONSTONE!

Decades of facilitating art

"Larry was President of Robin's Bookstore, the oldest independent book store in Philadelphia, until it closed in December 2012. He is the co-founder of Moonstone Inc. and director of the Moonstone Arts Center, has served on the boards of the Pennsylvania Center for the Book, the Read Aloud Coalition of Philadelphia and The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression. He has served on the literature panel of the Pennsylvania Council for the Arts and the advisory boards of The Mayor's Commission on Literacy, the Philadelphia Ink program of the Pennsylvania Humanities Council's Year of the Pennsylvania Writer and Art Sanctuary. Larry created and directed The Celebration of Black Writing for 18 years, The Paul Robeson Festival for 7 years, Poetry Ink for 22 years and various other Moonstone programs. He currently produces poetry programs and since 2009 The Hidden History Project, city wide festivals celebrating the life and work of social activists, such as John Brown, Frances Harper, Martin Delany and Ida B. Wells.

“After over 50 years in the book industry and 35 years of presenting poets and other authors, I think of myself as a facilitator not a critic. Our new motto for the Moonstone Arts Center, proposed by a Temple intern, is “Everyone has a Voice,” and I see our mission as helping to present that voice. It is the public’s job to embrace or reject that voice. My problem with the concept of “quality” is that it tends to mean “what I like.” My heroes in poetry are Dennis Brutus, Sonia Sanchez and Margaret Randall, poets who tell the truth and pay the price. Dennis, in a discussion at the Dodge Poetry Festival said, “I will bite the hand that feeds me.” Art/Poetry is the attempt to get others to see what you see, about the world and about yourself, to be honest and brave. It is why artists are in trouble most of the time.”

Many people would confuse me for a poet, when in actual fact, I am not one. In fact, I do not particularly like poetry. My stepfather was a poet which was motivation to hate the stuff. I poured a bottle of ginger ale over his typewriter in protest. Do you remember typewriters?

What I do love is words. What they mean, what you can do with them. You can write a 300-page novel, a 3-page poem, a 3-line haiku. How do you communicate, how do you get others to see what you see, feel what you feel? It is hard to write a novel to get your idea across, it is harder to do it with a poem and hardest to do it with a haiku. How do you communicate the truth? Do you have the nerve? Everything is against it, do not shake the trees, use euphemisms, and write what is popular. For fifty years I ran a bookstore. I bought the books, displayed the, sold them. There was nothing more fun than getting into a conversation with someone and talking about books. What books do you like? Who is your favorite author? Have you read this

book? I know, you can go on Amazon and it will pick books for you. You bought this so you may like this. It is an algorithm and it is linear. It does not suggest a poet or fiction writer because of the political book you like, it suggests other political books, in the same category of thinking. It does not challenge you to read something different, only the similar books.

Moonstone is a 501(C) 3 non-profit organization founded in 1983 with a belief that Learning is a life-long activity and that Art stimulates both cognitive and affective learning at all ages. We operated a preschool and continue to operate the Moonstone Arts Center, which creates programs based on the philosophy that the arts, creativity, and imagination are essential aspects of life and learning. While literature is at the center of Moonstone’s programing, we believe that Art, in all its forms, is more than enrichment for occasional dabbling; it affects how one thinks, sees, interprets, describes, meets life and functions in society.

The Moonstone Arts Center’s goal is to “promote creative exchange through diverse cultural programs” and produces over 130 public events each year in several venues. Emerging and established poets are featured every Wednesday at Fergie’s Pub. Philly Loves Poetry, a talk show and poetry reading, is on PhillyCAM, public access television. New Voices and other programs are presented at the Free Library and other venues. Our largest program is the marathon Poetry Ink: 100 Poets Reading, an all-day poetry reading, presented since 1996, in which poets present their work back-to-back, often in pairings that create contrasts between styles, levels of experience and the culture of the poets themselves. One of Moonstone’s goals is to investigate how art and society intertwine.

Over the years in Moonstone’s various programs we have had many distinguished writers and historians; however, our objective is to support young beginning artists and recognize those from the past who have made exceptional contributions to both literature and history. Perhaps the largest single program was with Gerard Adams, the Irish republican politician who is the president of the Sinn Féin, followed closely by Maya Angelou. We have had two United States Poet Laureates: Daniel Hoffman and Rita Dove; as well as all the Philadelphia Poet Laureates. Pete Seeger was here twice as was Amiri Baraka and Howard Zinn and Nelson George. Our Moonstone Gold Series has presented Major Jackson, Raymond Keith Gilyard, Gregory Pardlo, E. Ethelbert Miller, Stephen Dunn, Samuel Ray Delany, Tim Seibles, Gerald Stern, Afaa Michael

“Nowhere else in Philly do we get such a wonderful mix of people, voices, and generations, and it is an experience in varieties of personalities as much as in poetry and poetics - everything from uplift to satire, from political protest to personal sorrow, love poems and tirades, transgression and decorum, the outrageous and the outraged, ranters and restrained formalists, street and academy, performance poets and shy ladies barely audible - pretty much the human spectrum. I loved listening... stayed a while, came back for more. Anyway, it was a great day... Only death is as great a leveler as Moonstone [Arts Center].” - Eleanor Wilner, author of Tourist in Hell; The Girl with Bees in Her Hair and other books of poetry.

For eighteen years Moonstone produced The Celebration of Black Writing, creating a multi-day festival which featured such notable writers as Sonia Sanchez, Charles Blockson, Charles Fuller, Kristen Hunter, Houston Baker, Rosa Guy, June Jorden, Barbara Chase-Riboud, John A. Williams, Amiri Baraka, Benjamin Quarles, Ann Petry, George Lamming, Paula Marshall, Albert Murry, Dorothy West, John Henrik Clarke, Chinua Achebe, Rita Dove and many more.

The Paul Robeson Festival ran from 1987 to 1994, and was developed by Moonstone in co-operation with Swords into Ploughshares and Charles L. Blockson Collection at Temple University. The Festival was designed as both a celebration of the life and work of Paul Robeson and as a forum that would encourage people to emulate his artistic and human integrity. The first Paul Robeson Festival was greeted in the Philadelphia Inquirer with the banner headline: “At last Philadelphia Honors Paul Robeson.” The Philadelphia City Council responded to the festival by recognizing April 5 – 11 1987 as “Paul Robeson Week in the City of Philadelphia” (Resolution no. 1016). Each annual festival combined live performances, screenings of Robeson’s films, and discussions of his legacy. Presentations of Paul Robeson Awards for Excellence, Political Conscience and Integrity were presented to Dennis Brutus (1989), Sonia Sanchez (1990), Ngugi Wa Thiong’o (1991), Ray, John & Stephen Fadden (1992). The annual programs were:

A Tribute to Paul Robeson (1987), The 90th Birthday Tribute to Paul Robeson, The Art of Protest, The Protest of Art, Which Side Are You On: The Artist, The Worker & The Struggle For Freedom, I Shall Be Heard: The Search for Free Expression, View From The Western Shore: Indigenous View of the Quincentenary, Paul Robeson’s 95th Birthday Tribute, Yearning to Breathe Free: Political Asylum in the United States.

The Paul Robeson Festival led Moonstone to explore the relation between art and social activism with programs such as the Betrayed: Violence Against Women, where three poets led an exploration of this topic; Justice Month, with a discussion between Angela Davis and Sister Helen Perjean; The Richard Wright Centennial Celebration with a week of activities with Julia Wright; and Thomas Paine’s Legacy: Three Centuries of Revolution in Philadelphia. This series of programs developed into the Hidden History Project, which looked at people who were important in our history but under recognized in our history books. Hidden History programs have included: Thomas Paine, John Brown, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, John C. Fremont, Martin R. Delany, Ida B. Wells, Lucretia Mott, Margaret Fuller, Harriet Jacobs, Charlotte Forten Grimké, The Underground Railroad in Philadelphia (Robert Purvis, William Still and the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society)

While we had published the Poetry Ink anthologies since 2005, we did not begin serious publishing until 2014. Since then, we have published over 200 chapbooks and perfect bound books by individual poets and anthologies on social issues as well as poetry forms.

I’d like to believe that art does more than what people see, feel or hear, thus, the philosophy, “art feeds the brain.” When a human being is born a switch turns on and they become learning machines. Everything that happens around them is a learning experience. Our philosophy is based on Progressive Education. The statements below are not direct quotes. John Dewey said, “you do not give someone something to learn, you give them something to do and in doing it they learn.” Elliott Eisner said that; “the arts teaches that there are multiple answers to every question, multiple choice testing teaches that there is only one answer, and that is wrong.” Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences proposes that people are not born with all of the intelligence they will ever have. To broaden this notion of intelligence, Gardner introduced eight different types of intelligences consisting of: Linguistic (language, poetry), Logical/Mathematical (math), Spatial (design in visual art, finding your way in the woods), Bodily-Kinesthetic (dance, sports), Musical (music), Interpersonal and Intrapersonal (which are reflected in theater), and Naturalist. Gardner notes that the linguistic and logical-mathematical modalities are most valued types in school and society. The arts are the entry to these intelligences. Everyone deserves and needs to be able to express themselves. The arts center believes in diversity, the importance of being around and communicating with a range of communities. We make an effort to being together artists from various communities, our poetry presentations usually present three poets from three different communities: educational, gender, ethnic, religious, etc. How do you communicate, share your experience, get others to understand and feel what you feel? Unfortunately, we tend to narrow our experience as we get older, while it is important that we expand, learn new things, and experience new experiences. This is what art does.

For our 25th anniversary we reached out to many poets who a read at Moonstone over the years. The anthology includes 300 poets plus 15 “spotlights,” my reminisces on some of my favorite poets. These include poets who have become famous as well as emerging poets, with no overall theme. That is, say what you want, personal or political.

Due to Covid we were forced to go virtual. I love live events and resisted this, but what it did is turn Moonstone from a Philadelphia institution to an international one. We have had poets who have read from all over the United States as well as Ireland, France, Italy, Russia, Zimbabwe, and Australia. We have published chapbooks for poets from the United States, Ireland, and France. We presented the first youth poet laureate of Philadelphia when she was 13 and a half. She recently graduated from college and we have published her first chapbook.

For Poetry Ink we put out a call to all poets, they need to sign up, it is not an open reading. We then put everyone in alphabetical order by last name and present them in that order. You do not get to read with your friends or only hear the kind of poetry you think you like, because you do not know what the person before you or after you will be presenting. This brings together a wide ranges of people across all the various categories and gets them to hear a range of poetry beyond what they think they like. Some people stay for the entire program of over five hours and others come for a short time.

For the 25th Annual we were forced to go virtual, so we presented on Zoom for two hours each day for six days. For the 26th annual we will have a live event on Sunday January 8, 2023 followed by a Zoom program on Monday January 9 and extending for as many days of two hour programs as needed.

In the journey, we have received various resolutions from the City of Philadelphia and the State of Pennsylvania for various programs. You will find on our website various tributes from some of the people we have worked with.

For the future, we expect to continue to present poets and other authors as well as to publish their books for the foreseeable future. Our social media handles are:

My word of advice to fellow artists in the country and the world over is:Do what you love. Do what you believe. Be self-sufficient and true to yourself. Do not expect accolades or riches. Thank you!”

Interviewed by: Martin Chivaku @DA_Scripta