Trapeta B. Mayson

Trapeta B. Mayson’s project, Dinner with Dinah: Prelude Workshop & Community Dinner, will be a land-based, poetry-centered gathering at Philadelphia’s historic Stenton House honoring the legacy of Dinah, an enslaved and later freed Black woman who once lived and labored there. As part of Trapeta’s Healing Verse series, this one-day event will invite up to twenty Black women and femmes, who are survivors of intimate partner violence and/or experiencing housing insecurity, to share a healing meal, writing ritual, and creative reflection. Participants will walk the grounds, dine on foods inspired by Dinah’s imagined world, and engage in poetry workshops centered on voice, survival, and reclamation. The gathering will also include readings of poems, open mic sharing, and a collective ritual to honor Dinah’s enduring spirit.

Through the creation of the Kergiema Liberian Youth Cultural Arts Exchange and a series of eight workshops revolving around the theme “I am from”, Trapeta will engage Liberian youth in Southwest Philadelphia in creative instruction and performance. Using poetry, traditional dance, singing, and drumming. Trapeta will use cultural arts as a foundation for youth to learn about Liberian culture, as well as creatively express themselves. With an aim to teach, exchange, and expand cultural knowledge, the project will explore youth perception of “place” and their struggles with “identity” and “self” in America. The project will culminate in a community showcase.

Trapeta is a poet whose biggest goals as an artist are to tell the truth in her work and to honor the experiences of others by providing an artistic platform for self-expression. She is committed to making art that is progressive and her poetry covers many themes-the nuances of being an immigrant living in the United States, being a woman of color, young people living in urban communities who feel silenced, and the impact of mental illness on families. Trapeta is currently a resident artist with Art Sanctuary's North Stars afterschool program and leads the Painted Bride Art Center's Rock The Pen monthly poetry workshop for high school students.