Before The Poem: An Immersive Literary Salon

An immersive literary salon and participatory installation exploring the emotional, sensory, and psychological worlds.
About this Event

Featuring: Avery “Prose” Brand, Koffee Dark’N Sweet, and Azizi Jasper

Curated by: Brittini Ward

Before the Poem is an immersive literary salon and participatory installation exploring the emotional, sensory, and psychological worlds that exist before a poem is ever spoken aloud.

Blending poetry, sound, installation, visual fragments, literary curation, found objects, audience interaction, and reflective practice, the experience invites participants to move through three distinct poetic environments inspired by three original commissioned poems.

Rather than immediately hearing the poems in full, audiences first encounter fragments, atmospheres, textures, prompts, whispers, books, projected text, and immersive sensory elements connected to the emotional interior of each poem.

Audience members will wear silent disco headphones while wandering through the installation environments, allowing them to move individually and quietly through each poetic world while listening to ambient soundscapes designed to deepen immersion and reflection.

The poems themselves remain partially hidden until later in the evening when the featured poets gather to perform the works live in full for the audience.

Before the Poem reimagines the literary salon as an embodied, interdisciplinary experience that invites audiences to encounter poetry through atmosphere, sensation, memory, and contemplation before language fully arrives.

About the Presenter(s):

Avery “Prose” Brand is a two-time Emmy-nominated writer and performer. He earned his B.A. in English with a Specialization in Writing from the University of Michigan. After graduating, Mr. Brand continued working at the University of Michigan as the Assistant Program Manager of Pre-College Programs. Mr. Brand is an award-winning poet who has written and performed for two decades, amassing a large body of work including commercials, songs, poems, and plays. Brand produced his spoken word stage play “Clique” in 2018 after 10 years of the play being taught and produced at the University of Michigan-Flint and several middle schools and high schools. A lover of music, Mr. Brand also works as an A & R and writer for RokkMass Entertainment Group, a Detroit-based record label and production company. Mr. Brand continues to combine his love for education with his love for creative language and music to create programs, courses, and training to improve the lives of youth and offer alternative forms of expression. Professionally, Mr. Brand’s goal is to create and provide quality services that fulfill their intended purpose, making people feel satisfied and special, whether it's teaching, entertaining, or otherwise. This is summed up in his personal professional motto: Efficient, Effective, Long Lasting.

Koffee Dark’N Sweet is a Detroit-based spoken word artist, performer, and creative force whose work blends raw truth, soulful energy, and intentional storytelling.

A poet at her core, Koffee uses her voice to explore themes of healing, identity, resilience, and transformation, delivering performances that are both deeply personal and universally felt. Her presence on stage is bold, engaging, and emotionally charged, inviting audiences not just to listen, but to experience.

Beyond performance, Koffee is a curator of creative spaces and a community advocate, using art as a means to activate healing and education, as well as stimulate the community economically.

Whether she’s commanding a stage, hosting an event, or collaborating on a creative project, Koffee Dark’N Sweet brings a signature blend of authenticity, passion, and purpose, leaving audiences moved, seen, and energized.

About the Curator:

Brittini Ward (Eye N Eye the Storyteller) is a Detroit-born multidisciplinary artist, storyteller, poet, curator, and cultural strategist whose work explores memory, belonging, and the ways stories move across generations. Through her creative practice, she transforms oral histories, community narratives, and lived experiences into immersive exhibitions, performances, archives, and participatory experiences that invite audiences to become active contributors to the stories around them.

As the founder of Eye N Eye LLC, Ward has spent over a decade developing projects that bridge art, community engagement, and cultural preservation. Her work centers on a methodology she calls storyholding, the practice of listening deeply, translating stories across mediums, and returning them to the community in ways that strengthen collective memory and connection. This approach guides projects such as Baba Juke™, a multimedia archive honoring the relationships between music fathers and their daughters, and the Detroit Poetry Archive™, a living archive documenting Detroit’s spoken word ecosystem through interviews, performance, and oral history.

Ward’s work has been featured by organizations including the Detroit Institute of Arts, Motown Museum, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and Black Bottom Archives. She is a recipient of a regional Emmy Award and a Detroit Jazz Festival Poster Contest winner.

About Detroit Lit :

Detroit Lit is a project to support Detroit’s literary community. We acknowledge and uplift the history and culture of Detroit as a city region of people who have been traditionally excluded from the national conversation. As a place that is majority Black, Arab American, and Latinx, we center writers of color and their experiences.

Through joyful engagements and high-quality professional development, we provide writers with opportunities to gain the skills they need to excel in this field. Detroit Lit’s mission is to sustain and expand Detroit’s vibrant writing community, so no one feels forced to leave to succeed in the literary arts.