Meeting the 91 year-old Naomi Long Madgett was one of those experiences that reminds me how lucky I am to have a job that allows me to be in the company of such awe-inspiring individuals. While Mrs. Madgett is originally from my neck of the woods in Virginia, she has lived in the Detroit area for 70 years, and is considered Detroit's lone Poet Laureate. We went to see her in a retirement community just outside of town, to learn about her life, her family, her career as a poet, and -  best of all - to hear her read not one, but three of her favorite poems to us.

She told us about her father, a minister whom she greatly admired growing up. He was a world traveller and could command a room, unlike her mother who stayed behind the scenes, and painted the Appian Way at the kitchen table in Virginia while her husband was touring Italy. Mrs. Madgett told us that she later realized the strength in her mother's self reliance and humility, and she read one of her favorite poems, a poem dedicated to her mother, about that very realization "72 years later": Reluctant Light.

We learned about her brother - a Tuskegee Airman - and about how Langston Hughes himself gave her the confidence to pursue her poetry beyond the walls of academia. She told us about the city's changes and of her dismay with the riots that erupted across Detroit in 1967. She held court all afternoon, and it was amazing.

I did not want to leave.

PUBLISHING

In addition to the long form content on Lincoln Now, we published a photo essay featuring Mrs. Madgett to Tumblr and coordinated an Instagram sequence between the client and photographer feeds, in addition to targeted posts in Facebook and Twitter.

RECORDING

The sound quality on this is terrible, so we didn't publish elsewhere, but this reading is nevertheless dear to me. So here it is!