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Poet Lemon Andersen is Navigating His Career in Right Direction

Lemon Anderson at a rehearsal for Def Poetry Jam Photo Credit: What's The 411 Networks Lemon Anderson at a rehearsal for Def Poetry Jam

When life got tough, Lemon didn’t make lemonade, he created an orchard

Hailing from Brooklyn, NY, artist extraordinaire, Lemon Anderson’s specialty is spoken-word, poetry, and acting. What makes Lemon special is his tenacity. After bouncing around from school to school, Lemon found himself in jail at Rikers Island and fortunately, at Rikers, he found a great teacher. From there Lemon began to focus on his greatness. He learned that life is a marathon, not a sprint, and you have to put the work in to see results.

Lemon considers himself to be a studied poet, which means he follows and studies the great poets who have come before him, which is a great attribute because so many people across industries don’t recognize the people who have come before them. They tend to think it’s unimportant or it doesn’t matter. Lemon also recognized from studying great poets that poetry is performance art which actually separates decent poets from great poets. A so-so poet may just recite a poem, but great poets put their whole being into the words. So when Spike Lee saw Lemon’s performance in Def Poetry on Broadway, he extended an opportunity to Lemon to work on two of his films proving that putting the work in was starting to pay off.

We’ll be watching.