AGING ODYSSEY
Wellness & Healing through the Lens of the
BLACK DANDELION Poem

Course Description:

This course offers a transformative journey for women over 60, utilizing the internationally acclaimed poem Black Dandelion by Flint Poet Laureate and Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow Semaj Brown as a catalyst for wellness and healing. Delivered through Semaj Brown's international integrative education platform, BLACK DANDELION: CONVERGENT VOICE™ (BDCV), the application engages participants across multiple learning spectrums, expanding literacies in art, science, health, wellness, and further.

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Available as a day-long interactive seminar or a series of 2.5-hour workshops, Aging Odyssey is a multimedia experience that travels between the life of the poem, a people, and a planet. Participants will engage in Semajian Method technology, wordplay, mind mapping, and Microscopic Intelligence, to examine their worlds. Microscopic Intelligence is the practice of observing and understanding invisible, yet deeply felt phenomena, such as cells, emotions, trauma, history, joy, and power.

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Through the course, the journey of the dandelion—from its resilient foliage to its seed-passing stage—becomes a metaphor for the trials and triumphs of these remarkable women who have learned to grow beyond the "mow down," a reference to the poem's opening line. The curriculum, which also draws on Semaj Brown's award-winning practice, PSL/POETRY AS A SECOND LANGUAGE: THE SEMAJIAN METHOD™, is designed to be both renewing and transformative. The Black Dandelion poem is utilized as technology to enhance literacy capacity, and improve mental wellness, and healing by educators and social workers from Flint to California, to Togo Africa.

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During the course, Semaj Brown curates a space to uplift and expand the magnitude of this historically marginalized sisterhood. They are the seasoned sisters, elders, vintage treasures, the healers who heal and need to be healed. They are the wise ones, the keepers of knowledge, and the grand urban griots who, like the dandelion bloom resembling a proud white afro, bending from the wind of many experiences, ready to pass seeds, these women− survivors and thrivers, open their palms to the sun and transfer insights and wisdom to the next generation.