Climbing Poetree
Website: http://www.climbingpoetree.com
Alixa Garcia and Naima Penniman-the tag-team, two-spirited, boundary-breaking artist duo,
Climbing PoeTree-have advanced what it means to be renaissance women. Poets, performers,
print-makers, dancers, educators, bookmakers, muralists, designers, and new media artists, these
janes-of-all-trades prove that you can be masterful in multiples. With roots in Haiti and Colombia,
Alixa and Naima reside in Brooklyn and track footprints across the country and globe on a mission
to overcome destruction with creativity. In a nutshell, Climbing PoeTree is a queer-feminist soulsister
co-conspiracy of acrobatic poets who moonlight as street artists and infiltrate public schools
and prisons with infectious ideas of how people can shape their own destinies.
Each with her own impressive background in performing, teaching, and activism, Alixa and Naima made their debut as a duo in July of 2003, when they launched a four-month tour across the nation with a riveting multi-media dance and poetry performance about the effects of the War on Drugs on the people of America's ghettos and Colombia's farmlands. In its premier year, Climbing PoeTree also released its first album Stethescope, and founded Fashion Statement, their sought-after line of silk-screened clothing.
In 2004, Alixa and Naima joined the Blackout Arts Collective and combined forces with likeminded artists, activists, and educators of color who believe in the transformative power of art to affect change in their communities. Climbing PoeTree propelled Blackout's 2004 and 2005 Lyrics on Lockdown tours, conducting workshops and headlining performances in and outside of prisons. In 2004, Alixa and Naima also began co-teaching poetry, visual arts, break-dancing, and leadership classes to youth through the Incarcerated Mother's Program and New York City school system, which would launch them into a fertile career as resident artists and guest facilitators at schools, youth programs, and juvenile correctional institutions across NYC and the nation. Among many highlights of 2004, Naima was a featured poet and panelist alongside Sonia Sanchez and Jessica Care Moore at the National Spoken Word Symposium in Iowa City, and Alixa was chosen as the 'Ground Breaking' poet to represent the U.S. in a televised cultural exchange hosted in South Africa by LoveLife. Other televised appearances include HBO's Def Poetry Jam and BET's The Next.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Climbing PoeTree launched its second national tour "Migration," which featured electrifying spoken word performances and arts-based community organizing workshops. A centerpiece of the "Migration" tour was the initiation of S.T.I.T.C.H.E.D.-a history-making endeavor wherein Alixa and Naima invite their audiences participants to write their Stories, Testimonies, Intentions Truths, Confessions, Healing Expressions, and Dreams on squares of fabric that are then sewn together into colorful prayer flags showcased at every Climbing PoeTree show.
2006 began for Climbing PoeTree with a journey to Cuba and Jamaica to execute the largest murals Alixa and Naima have created to date. In the same season they produced their highlyanticipated second LP, Ammunition, whose release party in Brooklyn drew crowds from as far as Detroit, D.C., and Toronto. Throughout the spring and summer of 2006, Climbing PoeTree were featured performers, panelists, and workshop facilitators at 25 festivals, conferences, clubs, and universities. In the fall they launched "98.6 Degrees of Separation," a three-month continental tour S.T.I.T.C.H.E.D.-centered workshops and performances wherein Alixa and Naima delivered their mind-opening message via a poetic craft they have reinvented and mastered. Climbing PoeTree has rocked 500 mikes and counting from Oakland to Atlanta, South Africa to Cuba with artists such as Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Danny Glover, The Last Poets, and Dead Prez. They have led workshops in institutions from Cornell University to Rikers Island. Through compelling artistry, these multi-talented, tireless, and driven young women channel hope into vision, shatter assumptions that bind the status quo, and make a better future visible, immediate, and irresistible.