Event
Cornerstore Folklore with Amir Sulaiman
Fri Apr 27: 7:00pm
$5-15 sliding scale ($5 increments)
(No one turned away for lack of funds)
** Join us for a poetry set by Amir Sulaiman and a presentation of one of his recent video projects! **
About
Cornerstore Folklore follows internationally renowned poet, Amir Sulaiman, as he travels the globe and explores world cultures through the lens of their various poetry traditions while contrasting them with his own poetry tradition of hip hop lyricism. As he travels farther out into the world, he explores deeper into himself.
Amir on Cornerstore Folklore:
After I appeared on HBOs Def Poetry Jam more than 10 years ago, I began to be invited to different parts of the world to recite my poems. One month Id be reciting in an ambassadors palace in Sweden and the next month Id be reciting poetry on a dirt road in a village in West Africa and the next month reciting for inmates in a prison in Oakland, California. The most fascinating part of these journeys went beyond the poetry I shared and became more about what was being shared with me.
When Id hear a California inmate who was doing 30 years in federal prison compose lines of poetry that almost verbatim matched the poetry of a Persian Sufi poet in Iran who died a thousand years ago, I began to desire for these different poets to know of each other. Also it made me look at my own tradition, hip hop lyricism, as a bearer of my peoples love and fear; triumphs and tragedies. I developed a fellowship at Harvard University entitled Between Rakim & Rumi to further explore these parallels.
As I began to form the idea of the show, Cornerstore Folklore, I found myself using a word that later I felt ashamed for using. When talking about the Iranians, for example, and their deep, wide ocean of Farsi love poetry, I would say how we need to do this show to humanize them in the eyes of the world. Humanize? They are already human. How do you humanize a human? Humanizing can only be necessary (or even possible) if people have been dehumanized. If media has the power to take humanity from people then through media we can restore humanity. If we can, then we must.
About Amir:
Amir Sulaiman is a poet, screenwriter and producer born in Rochester, New York. His poems cross subjects of love, tragedy as well as what it means to reconcile humanity with the unprecedented trials of modernity. He has performed his works across the US as well as many other countries including England, Belgium, Senegal, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Australia, Iran and the Netherlands, and continues to tour world-wide. His recently published book of poetry, Love, Gnosis & Other Suicide Attempts met with critical acclaim, in addition to his latest album The Opening, the third in a unique trilogy project, following The Meccan Openings (2011) and The Medinan Openings (2012). Amir was first introduced to a National audience in 2004 when he was featured for two seasons on the groundbreaking series Def Poetry Jam on HBO.
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LocationNorthwest Film Forum (View)
1515 12th Ave
Seattle, WA 98122
United States
Categories
| Minimum Age: 18 |
| Kid Friendly: No |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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