Members of Thomas Edison High School’s Poetry Slam Team inside Gravers Lane Gallery along with guests for “Night Animals: Divine King After Dust In Honor of Tyrone.” From left to right – Freda Louise, Alexander Fernandez, Yusef Komunyakaa, Zaire Douglas, Rachel Bliss, Shante Fortson, Sydney Hunt Coffin, Christian Cherry and Brandon Melendez. (Photo by Aubrey Whelan)[/caption]

by Kevin Dicciani

To honor the memory of Tyrone Tillman, a 17-year-old who was tragically killed in July 2015 in a hit-and-run accident, Gravers Lane Gallery, 8405 Germantown Ave., hosted a special event on May 7 entitled, “Night Animals: Divine King After Dust In Honor of Tyrone.”

Tillman was riding his bike near his home in North Philadelphia when a driver hit him, stopped to look at him, and then sped off. Not long after the accident, Tillman was pronounced dead at Temple University Hospital. Because he didn’t have any identification on him, Tillman’s body lay in a morgue for three days.

The driver in the incident wasn’t arrested until September 2015. She said she was trying to speed past another vehicle when she hit Tillman. Afterwards, she removed the license plate from her car and attempted to hide her vehicle, but witnesses followed her and identified her license plate and car. She has been charged with homicide by vehicle, leaving the scene, tampering with evidence, and other offenses.

Not only was Tillman a fullback on Thomas Edison’s football team, he was also a budding poet and member of the school’s award-winning Poetry Slam Team. Members of the team didn’t know that Tillman died, as his death hadn’t been publicly announced, until they saw his backpack on the news. At the time of his death, he had been applying to colleges, where he wanted to play football and study business.

Bruce Hoffman, director of the Gravers Lane Gallery, said he wanted to host the event and exhibit in order to bring “a positive element out of this negative situation.”

Another purpose of the event, Hoffman said, was to shine a light on the violence and misfortune that often befall youths.

“It’s about giving recognition to well-deserved, hard-working, young kids in the city, who are often times discarded like Tyrone was discarded after this woman hit him and took off,” Hoffman said.

The idea for the event originally came about through Freda Anderson, one of the co-coaches of the Poetry Slam Team along with Sydney Coffin — a Philadelphia representative to the Steering Committee of the Yale National Initiative to strengthen teaching in public schools, and representative to the Teachers Institute of Philadelphia based at the University of Pennsylvania.

The Poetry Slam Team played an integral part in getting the event jumpstarted by pitching the idea for the memorial to Anderson, who in turn reached out to her mother, Rachel Bliss, a nationally known painter whose works have been featured in the Philadelphia Museum Collection.

Bliss then contacted Yusef Komunyakaa, a Pulitzer Prize winning poet, the Poet Laureate of New York and Distinguished Senior Poet at New York University’s graduate creative writing program. Together they conceptualized the event, basing it in part on Komunyakaa's ongoing series of poetry titled, "Night Animals." 

For years Bliss has been collaborating with Komunyakka on “Night Animals.” That connection, along with her daughter being a co-coach of the Poetry Slam Team, helped conceive the theme and purpose of the event and exhibit. The idea for the memorial was then brought to Hoffman.

"We wanted to give the Chestnut Hill community the opportunity to celebrate some of the gifts that these students have to offer," Anderson said.

Another element that inspired the exhibit was a poem which Tillman wrote, titled “Divine Kings After Dust.” Together, Bliss, the Poetry Slam Team, Coffin and Komunyakka used this poem as a prefix to create a visual memorial for Tillman, which is comprised of the student’s paintings and drawings. The artwork is inscribed with poems from the team, some of which pay tribute to Tillman and his life, and others that relate to Komunyakka’s “Night Animals.”

Hoffman said all of the work done by the Poetry Slam Team — their paintings, their drawings, their poetry — is “spectacular.”

“The kids are unbelievable,” Hoffman said. “There are these incredible drawings that are done on board, all representing Tyrone in some fashion, either drawing from his poetry or his spirit. It’s very interesting art.”

The central piece of the exhibition is an altar featuring a portrait of Tillman and ceramic figures done by all the students. The ceramic figures are night animals, the inspiration for which came from poems featured in Komunyakka’s “Night Animals.”

Hoffman said the night animals pay homage to Tillman. He also said that having someone like Komunyakka at the event, whose work deals with such themes as isolation, was inspirational for the students, as their own poems and paintings deal with similar topics, such as being an outcast or feeling like an outcast due to social or economic factors.

“The exhibition was really quite moving,” Hoffman said.

Another way Hoffman said the incident was turned from a negative into a positive was that the Poetry Slam Team, along with Tillman's family, created a scholarship fund in Tyrone's name for kids on the team. The teachers at Thomas Edison are the ones who select the recipients of the scholarship, he said. A quarter of the proceeds made from the exhibit will go to the fund, half to the students, and Gravers Lane Gallery gets a quarter, with half of those profits going to the fund as well, Hoffman said.

Hoffman said the event and the exhibit are an opportunity to honor Tillman by celebrating the things he enjoyed most in life. Despite the inherent sadness of the event and exhibit, he said it is also a reflection on the positive, as well as being uplifting to all those who knew and loved Tillman.

“It’s an affirmation of working hard and being creative,” Hoffman said. “To see your work in a professional gallery, to see your name on the window in professional type, you can’t have a more affirming reason to keep going and being a creative, positive force.

“People coming in and talking to them and complimenting their work and applauding their poetry, as a young person, you can’t ask for anything better. Money doesn’t buy that.”

The Thomas Edison Poetry Slam Team will do an informal performance at the Gravers Lane Gallery on June 5 from 2 to 4 p.m., and two jazz musicians will also perform at the same time. The team, along with Anderson and Bliss, will be at the gallery from 1 to 5 p.m. June 5 is the last day of the exhibition.