jessica Care moore is letting Detroit walk into her story

There are poets and then there are people who build the rooms where poets are born. jessica Care moore has spent 30 years being both. The Detroit Poet Laureate, founder of Moore Black Press and creator of Black Women Rock has performed at the Apollo Theater, Carnegie Hall and the Smithsonian, recorded alongside Common, Nas and The Last Poets, and put her own money behind voices the industry was not going to find on its own. Now, she is turning that entire body of work into something you can walk through.

On Becoming a Poet

This spring, jessica Care moore opens a multimedia art installation at a Detroit gallery called The Red. The show, titled On Becoming a Poet, was originally set for April 30 but has been pushed to May 28. She describes it as “a futuristic retrospect” of her work across three decades, built with collage, canvas and a timeline of her life as an artist.

The motivation behind it is straightforward. “A lot of the young people now, you talk to them, they’re like, how is it that you are a poet? How do you make a living? How do you have a house that poems built? How do you have a car that poems pay for?” she said. “I want to show them that there is actually a way to build your life this way. You can use your imagination to dream yourself into the future.”

Building what wasn’t there

moore has never waited for institutions to make room. She founded Moore Black Press in 1997 and has published poets including Saul Williams and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka. In 2024, the press secured an imprint deal with HarperCollins. Her children’s book Your Crown Shines, illustrated by Dare Coulter, was recently named by Oprah as one of 6 Books to Reread.

She describes herself not as a celebrity but as a void filler. “Things are not there for us, then we’re supposed to do it,” she said. “We’re supposed to fill that void that’s not there.”

That same thinking shaped Black Women Rock, the rock and roll concert and empowerment platform she founded in Atlanta 22 years ago. “The history of Black American music and Black women in rock and roll is a story that hasn’t been told correctly yet,” she said. “Mine is not just a historical piece. It’s about supporting the Black women who play rock and roll now.”

Passing it on

As Detroit’s third Poet Laureate, moore has been intentional about not holding the title longer than it serves the work. She launched Poet Laureate office hours at Michigan Central train station, offering one-on-ones with anyone who wants to learn how to publish, build a brand or simply become a better writer. “We shouldn’t have to make people reinvent the wheel,” she said. “I could tell them how to publish a book, how to get an ISBN, create a logo. Why am I not gonna share information?”

She is also clear that the position should move on. “I do not want to be the Poet Laureate of Detroit forever. I want to pass it on.” She credits Sonia Sanchez, Gil Scott-Heron and The Last Poets as people who passed things to her, and sees that lineage as the whole point.

What legacy actually looks like

For moore, legacy is not an abstract idea. It is a timeline on a gallery wall, a children’s book in a school library, a young poet learning how to file for an ISBN. “I want young people, particularly ones in Detroit, to be able to walk through a timeline of my life to see how I became,” she said.

On Becoming a Poet opens May 28 at The Red in Detroit. For more on jessica Care moore and her upcoming work, visit jessicacaremore.org.