The Fire, Soul, and Singular Cadence of BAKARI McCLENDON

Bakari McClendon has headed in an opposite direction. He hopes it's the right one.

This is an era when many young adults, especially artists, feel a need to move far from mid-Michigan. In contrast, McLendon is a 25-year-old poet and activist who three years ago came to Saginaw from Jacksonville, Fla.

He struggles at times, but he's sticking and staying.

"There's talent in Saginaw, but people need to support one another more," McClendon says.

"I heard it all when I came here: Bare, dry as a bone, ghost town, I was told. 'If you can make it in Saginaw, you can make it anywhere.' But people should realize that in a place with so much economic hardship and political hardship, that's where the arts can really thrive. People are looking for something, and these are the people most in need of the arts."

His verses jump off the page but are even more compelling at live recitals. He sometimes will soulfully sing his opening passages. His multi-paced narratives often offer rhymes in unexpected places rather than in the standard line-by-line rhythm.

McClendon came to our Rust Belt in 2004 when his mother, Elizabeth, married the Rev. Charles H. Coleman, Sr., a former Saginaw City Councilman. They moved to a central East Side home in the heart of some of Saginaw's worst blight, a home where Charles Coleman has committed to staying, rather than fleeing as others have done.

"It was a culture shock," McClendon says. "It's not like I had never seen poverty before, but in the South it's different, more of a mix of poor blacks and whites together. In Saginaw it's more like a real ghetto. I told myself, 'Man, these conditions are kind of rough."

He quickly found his way around. He has written for Saginaw Valley State University's literary journal, Cardinal Sins, and won first prize in a campus wide essay contest. He knocked on the door at downtown's Dawn of a New Day - a coffee shop in the Bearinger Building, and is in his second year conducting poetry slams on the third Wednesday of each month. The next is on Feb. 21 at 8 p.m.

Late last year, a McClendon poetry recital caught the eye of Linda Holoman, a Delta College administrator who also hosts the monthly Soul Issue telecast on the school's television station. Holoman has made McClendon a regular guest not only for his own work, but to interview other local artists. By coincidence, Soul Issue also airs at 8 p.m. on each month's third Wednesday, but there's also a rerun at 10 a.m. on the following Sunday.

Holoman says McClendon and his recruits bring younger flavor to her ongoing theme of Passing On, Telling Our Stories, as a monthly feature.

"I saw him with a youth group last year and was impressed with how he handled himself," Holoman says. "He has a unique style, plus the added ability to bring in others and to conduct his own interviews with them. We definitely will be seeing more of Bakari. Plus," she adds with a laugh, "he has those dreadlocks and I kind of like those dreads."

McClendon also is organizing a Black History Month poetry event for Feb. 14 at 9:30 p.m. in SVSU's Student Center, and making dates at other colleges across the state.

He compiled a 70-page poetry book and says he has sold about 600 at $10 a pop, although like many grassroots artists he sometimes finds himself handing out his work for free.
"I'm trying to get better about that," McClendon says with a laugh.

"In today's culture with so few people taking time to read, I've been asked why I did a book as opposed to a CD or a DVD, but I've always felt my edge was in the writing, especially because I have some experience in journalism. My goal ever since I was young was always to do a book. My grandmother (Nonar Bell Richardson Walton) was a published poet and my role model."

Still, his main source of income is as a Temple Theater bartender and usher. He had a second part time job as a community organizer and youth program leader through the Houghton-Jones Neighborhood Resource Center at 1708 Johnson, but grant money dried up late last year.

"I banged on doors, which is difficult nowadays with all the fear, but we got some people to come out who felt good to encounter a younger face, a fresh voice," McClendon says. "We did some cleanups and other projects. The problem is that the conditions have become so bad, sometimes it felt like putting a Band-Aid on a gash wound."

Locally, he says he wishes for more unity and a reduction of what he describes as 'a power struggle within the power struggle' that causes those seeking justice to battle among one another rather then challenging the various forces of oppression.

McClendon returned home to Florida before the holidays for the death of a close uncle, William Benjamin 'Snooky' Walton Jr., a blues guitarist who at times gigged with Muddy Waters on the South's so-called chitlin’ circuit.

He had lost one of his jobs, he had observed the scope of Saginaw hardship, and now he had lost a loved one. The thought crossed McClendon's mind at that time to stay home, but he has returned to Saginaw with firm resolve.

"There still has to be some potential here," he says. "Health care and education will always thrive, and those two will intersect because to become doctors and nurses, you have to be educated, and these are people who will always want the arts."

"The way I look at it, I'm becoming part of the creative services industry. I don't ever want to get complacent. That might be sufficient for others, but sometimes you have to be willing to take a different path and my best efforts are with the people, my arts, and my honesty."

McClendon can be reached through (352) 256-1548 or via bakari.mcclendon@gmail.com.