ODES TO FLIGHT DRAW EYES TO THE SKY
Valada Flewellyn’s “A Pilot Lights the Way” is featured in “Words in Flight,” an exhibit of local poetry at the Orlando International Airport through Sept. 30. The exhibit, located in Terminal A before security, introduces travelers to the poetic talents of Central Floridians.
“Pioneers in a turbulent sky.” This opening line serves as the thesis to Valada Flewellyn’s “A Pilot Lights the Way,” a poetic ode to early Black aviators. “I’m guided by the message,” said the Longwood resident of her poetry.
Flewellyn’s poem is one among the 13 poets featured in “Words in Flight,” an exhibit of local poetry at the Orlando International Airport through Sept. 30.
The display combines vintage photography with the words of area poets, including former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins, Diverse Word host Shawn Welcome and UCF professor Terry Ann Thaxton.
“The theme of the exhibit was about flight, but we expanded that to include flight of any kind,” said the exhibit’s curator, Orlando poet laureate Susan Lilley. “There are bird poems, there are flights of fancy.” Lilley also
contributed a piece to the exhibit.
The exhibit, located in Terminal A before security, was designed to introduce travelers to the poetic talents of Central Florida. “I love watching both visitors and employees stop in front of the poems to take a minute to engage with the power of words,” said Carolyn Fennell, senior director of public affairs for the airport. “This exhibit offers a moment of pause, in a time filled with uncertainty and transition.”
Flewellyn’s poem was originally written in 2011, commemorating Jesse LeRoy Brown, the first African-American naval aviator. “I’ve written a lot of what I call commemorative poems,” said Flewellyn. “When I’m asked to do things like that, I pay attention to things I normally wouldn’t. I get attuned to different ideas.”
The poem was turned into a traveling exhibit talking about Brown’s life. Flewellyn, 69, has made a cause out of combining African-American history and poetry. “Poetry is the way I respond to things, good and bad,” she said. “It allows me to take big ideas and put them on paper. And to see myself in a way.”
Flewellyn discovered her interest in both poetry and Black history growing up in Cleveland, Ohio. “From reading autobiographies, I realized the greatness of my people,” she said. “And at the same time I realized that, I realized I wasn’t learning about that in school.”
Her interest led her to take a part time job at the African American Museum in Cleveland, the country’s first independent museum of Black history. The museum was founded by Icabod Flewellen, the uncle of her future husband. “I didn’t get much work done because I spent most of my time at his knee, learning about Black history,” she said. “So that experience informed my poetry a lot.”
Flewellyn moved to Longwood in 1987. “At the time it was the 100th anniversary of Eatonville,” she said, “so I knew I had come at the right time.”
In 1990, she published “Poetically Just Us,” an anthology of local Black poets, which she traveled to schools to share. “At the time, there weren’t a lot of local Black published poets,” she said. “So it was good to go into the schools and inspire local children to know that they could do it. An author isn’t a strange thing; it’s a human being that lives next door. It’s you if you would avail yourself of it.”
Flewellyn has published several books on the topics of Black history, including 2009’s “African Americans of Sanford” in conjunction with the Sanford Historical
Society. In 2018, she published a history of the African-American cultural organization Jack and Jill of America, a foundation for which she is the poet laureate.
Flewellyn enjoys seeing her poetry up on the wall in a public space such as the airport. “There’s so much poetry we write that never gets heard or seen or felt,” she said. “So when a poem escapes the dungeon of our drawer or notebook or computer and is able to be out there to catch the eye or the ear, it’s exciting.”
She hopes that passersby will take some comfort from the exhibit and maybe spark some new ideas. “I give my poetry to the world with no expectations of how people will receive it,” she said. “Because I realize everyone who looks at it brings to it their own experience.”