The Motor Signal Reading Series jolts the poetry reading out of its conventional form. Motor Signal invites local poets to read their work, but it goes beyond a typical poetry reading by involving the audience in an activity of literary co-creation. Now in it’s seventh season, join us for the second event of the year featuring readers Semaj Brown & Sumita Chakrabotry!

Semaj Brown is a Poet. She is a science-driven author, educator, dramatist who evolved playing violin in the Highland Park Chamber and Cass Tech Symphony Orchestras. Semaj flourished spending summers in Stratford, Ontario, studying Shakespeare. She also studied the legacy poets of Broadside Press, dissecting literature with her mother, the late Mrs. Bessie L. James, a classically trained pianist who taught a socio-political appreciation for world cultures through a Pan-African lens, was the crucible that would inform Semaj's aesthetic. In her home science laboratory, explorations expanded the imagination of young Semaj. By college, with a Baccalaureate degree in Biological Sciences, Semaj was comparing patterns in traditionally disparate disciplines—math, science, literature, art, and music. This integration of genres would become Semaj's amalgam that would inform her creative process.

Sumita Chakraborty is a poet, essayist, and scholar whose debut collection of poetry, Arrow, is forthcoming from Alice James Books (U.S.) and Carcanet Press (U.K.) in September. She received a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship in 2017 and, in 2018, was shortlisted for a Forward Prize (U.K.). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry 2019, and elsewhere, and she is Helen Zell Visiting Professor in Poetry at the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor. Find her on Twitter at @chakrabsumita.