From Bankhead to Broadway

Wendell Brock - The Atlanta Journal Constitution

You know it's Tamika Harper by the sound of her shoes.

Coming down the stairs of her mother's home on Westmoor Drive on Atlanta's west side, they make a big noise. Compared with the black leather Roman sandal-stilettos that laced halfway up her legs when she made her Broadway debut last year, these tan strap pumps are elfin. But they've still got drama.

So when Harper, who uses the stage name Georgia Me, finally appears in the room, she fills it as certainly as the overstuffed floral chairs and the bookcase of family photographs behind her. Her lips glisten. Her dress is paisley. Her hair spills onto her shoulders in Rapunzel-like corkscrews.

"My look sells me more than anything else in the world," says the 27-year-old star of "Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam," which arrives at the Fox Theatre on Thursday, "because people think: 'How dare this big black girl think she's beautiful!?' And then on top of that, I am!"

After years of self-doubt, Harper, who stands 5-feet-10 and weighs more than 200 pounds, seems to have come to terms with her size. In poems like "Full Figure Potential: A fat girls blues" and "Nig-gods," both of which are showcased in the Tony Award-winning "Def Poetry Jam," the Booker T. Washington High School graduate and self-described "ghetto belle from the 'hood" sings a song of herself --- with no apologies.

"GA Me," or Georgia Me, is an acronym for her life's credo: "God's apostle, moving everyone."

But even as she luxuriates in the power of positivity, this daughter of a former hospital worker uses her art to lament the culture of drugs, guns and violence that jeopardized her inner-city neighborhood and jolted her youth.

The single mother of a 3-year-old son named Wisdom, Harper says she has been molested by a police officer. She's been raped. She's experienced the murder of a cousin in a drug war and had a depressed girlfriend commit suicide. And she's sold marijuana on the streets.

But since her conversion to poetry in 1998, the Bankhead Highway gadabout has played the Aspen Comedy Festival, toured Europe with "Def Poetry Jam" and performed on the 2003 Tony Awards program. She has done readings with Danny Glover, Phylicia Rashad and Jeffrey Wright and, while in Scotland with "Def Poetry," was invited to appear in "The Vagina Monologues." Her work has just been published in "Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway" (Atria, $20), a book of poems and interviews.

Now Harper wants to pursue a career in TV, film and writing --- and dreams of running for political office. "I'm like Arnold Schwarzenegger," she says. "Only I can speak English."

Voted most popular member of her 1995 senior class at Washington High, Harper has always been precocious, political and loud. In the 11th grade, the debate team captain staged a walkout to protest an outbreak of violence at the historic campus where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Lena Horne once studied.

But in 1992, her beloved 98-year-old grandmother died, and her life started to fall apart. She flunked a class, missed her graduation and came close to suicide. She turned down a scholarship to Miles College in Alabama and worked as a pollster for the Gallup Organization. To supplement her income, she started selling marijuana. "I liked hanging out on the street. That was the bomb. It was exciting. It was fun. It was drama. And you know every woman likes a little bit of drama," she says.

But one night in 1998, she had a scary encounter with police officers in the parking lot of an apartment building on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. She had "five dime bags of weed" in her pocket and feared she was about to be arrested.

This was too much drama.

"I'm like, 'My life is over. My mama's going to kill me because I'm out here selling weed.' "

As the blue lights flashed, Harper, who had only begun to dabble in poetry circles, saw a path that would help her change her life. She remembers telling her friends: "I really want to do something with this poetry. I really want my words to be heard."

Harper eventually got involved in Atlanta's vibrant spoken-word scene, appearing at places like Club 112. In 2001, this fan of Nikki Giovanni and Goodie Mob was named Poetry Slam Champion of Atlanta.

Last year, after appearing three times on "Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry," HBO's Peabody Award-winning spoken-word series, Harper joined the 10-member company that took the show to Broadway. The event got rave reviews and signaled that this urban-incubated, hip-hop-influenced poetry style was finally gaining acceptance as a legitimate art form. A visceral combination of the personal and the political, of the anger of alienation and the urgent rush of empowerment, "Def Poetry Jam on Broadway" meant that the world was finally listening to folks like Georgia Me.

"I gave my all, and poetry gave me what it could give," she says. "It's my weapon and it's my wealth."

"I don't do a poetry project without calling her first," says producer Stan Lathan, who partners with Simmons on the HBO and Broadway shows. "There are two or three poets that are the go-to poets, and she's absolutely one of them," says Lathan, a prominent TV director whose credits include the pilots for "Martin" and "Moesha." "I can't imagine a 'Def Poetry' show without Tamika. She kind of defines what 'Def Poetry' is all about."

You might look at me and see lazy and weak,

Giving no second thought that before you an angel may speak.

--- From "Full Figure Potential: A fat girls blues"

Harper shares a home with her mother, three uncles, three cousins and her son. A tour of her neighborhood includes a stop at Washington High School, a meal of chicken and dressing at Chanterelle's restaurant and a visit to the apartment building where her cousin was killed and she was nearly arrested.

By 10 that night, she's onstage at the Five Spot in Little Five Points, where she's greeted like a celebrity at a poetry reading hosted by old friend Malik Salaam.

"I got Georgia in the house," Salaam tells the crowd, which responds rapturously. At first, Harper refuses alcohol --- "I don't want to be drunk when I perform" --- but the minute Salaam announces that he's giving away free vodka drinks, she perks up her ears and heads to the bar.

She then delivers one of her signature poems, "Nig-gods," an anthem to her black brothers:

Black men are the only creation

that command your attention on impact

by their color, their spirit, the way they act

as a matter of fact, I'm amazed

at how they handle situations

all across these nations

doors locking, purse watching,

looks of fear as they enter the station

but they laugh and move on,

steady grooving to a song

"Tamika is willing to talk about the 'hood, with a capital H, in a way that does not glamorize or romanticize poverty and violence but affirms the human in it," says Suheir Hammad, a fellow Def Poet. "She confronts her insecurities. That is real freedom, to not worry about anyone finding out what you dislike about yourself or where you come from, because you've already put it out there."

Inez Harper, Tamika's mother, remembers her daughter as a born performer who began appearing in plays in the third grade. "She'd say, 'Mama, one day I'm going to be traveling all around the world.' I said, 'What you talking about?' She said, 'You'll see, I'm going to be an entertainer.' "

By junior high, Tamika was crafting essays. But while her classmates wrote about famous people --- the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X --- she interviewed her grandmother about the struggles of African-American life.

In the late '90s, a co-worker read one of Harper's poems and encouraged her to visit a poetry cafe. The poem, "Sista to Sista," which is now part of the "Def Poetry" show, is about promiscuity and the empty thrills of casual sex.

He'll never want you for his queen just a temp

now take that sixty dollars to the Pink Fox

and get your weave crimped

At first, Harper thought, "I ain't going to say this kind of stuff in front of nobody." But she did it anyway. "And it freed a lot of people, and it freed me. And I said, 'God, if you allow me to do this, I'll do it anyway you say do it.' "

In 2000, when Lathan began putting together "Def Poetry" for HBO, he solicited a video of Atlanta poets. One of them was Harper.

"Tamika was a lock the minute her tape started to play," Lathan recalls. "It was like a revelation, seeing this woman and seeing not only her command of the language and her ability to express feelings, but just her presence and her stature."

She went to New York and was immediately cast. Today Lathan says he and Simmons want to develop new projects for Harper. "The sky is the limit," he says. "She can go to the top."

Among the many things that Harper wants to do, if she ever makes any money, is set up a foundation to aid senior citizens and youth in her community. She wants to help her neighborhood elders keep their houses --- and "send kids who ain't got straight A's to college and some kids who ain't got no A's to vocational school."

Meanwhile, Harper is basking in the attention, the travel, the rock-star footwear.

"My dream was to be like Martin Luther King, Tupac and Mary J. Blige. And God kind of made it all that at one time, and it's just the dopest thing in the world. I get to move people. I get to teach people. I get to heal people. I get to enlighten people. Oh my God, you get to do so much in this one vehicle."