Poetry Hour: Slam Anderson responds to Kendra Frorup’s Healing Properties

Stop by Gallery221@HC Dale Mabry for an hour of poetry and art as spoken word artist Slam Anderson responds to Kendra Frorup’s exhibition, Healing Properties. Frorup will also share original writing, creating a layered conversation between visual art and spoken word.

In Healing Properties, Kendra Frorup explores memory, healing and identity through prints and sculptures created around her 2024–2025 Fulbright Fellowship in the Bahamas. Inspired by her family’s bush farm—land first cultivated by her mother through a government lease-to-own program—Frorup documents the plants and traditions of bush medicine, a practice rooted in resilience and care. Bordering the Bonefish Pond National Park, the farm becomes a site of remembrance and renewal, reflecting her family’s history with cancer and her own journey of recovery. Transforming collected and natural materials, Frorup turns the act of making into an act of healing.

Responding to the exhibition through spoken word, Slam Anderson brings her own deeply personal approach to storytelling and healing. A nationally recognized slam poet, writer and facilitator, Slam uses storytelling to empower youth and adults through advocacy, poetry and community engagement. Growing up in the foster care system shaped her commitment to storytelling as a tool for connection and change, a mission that continues through her performances, workshops and community work across the country.

Slam is the Outreach Director for The Kitchen Table Literary Arts Center and a graduate of the University of South Florida, where she earned a B.A. in Creative Writing. She is currently pursuing a Master of Social Work degree.

Kendra Frorup is an Assistant Professor of Art and Design at the University of Tampa. She received her MFA in Sculpture from Syracuse University and has exhibited nationally and internationally.

Join us for this unique conversation between poetry and visual art.