A traveler — a poet — and a bit of a millennial-beat, Hafizah Geter read at Medgar Evers College on December 14 in an event that attracted scores of finger-snapping students from the Crown Heights institution.
Her spoken-word reading, with an emphasis on equating the political with the personal, led to her final poem of the evening, “Testimony,” an unreleased tribute to Ditmas Park-native Anita Neal, the mother of Kyam Livingston.
Ms. Livingston, at 37 years old, died in her jail cell in 2013 after guards allegedly denied her requests for medical help for several hours. The following year, Ms. Geter, new to Brooklyn, met Ms. Neal when she refused to overlook her day-in-&-day-out crying on her sidewalk as she mourned the loss of her daughter.