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Be-Side
The Home of Hakm's B-Side e-alter ego...his auxiliary brain or external hard drive...
From NY to NJ to NM … beats, bards & baked goods in Santa Fe
A night of poetry with a pair of world traveling hip hop scholars at the home of the Big Pun Waffle
for immediate release – What happens when you put together a native New Yorker with an affinity for baked goods (bordering on obsession) with a hip hop theater expert and a poet laureate? You have to go to Momo & Company at 5:30pm on Friday, May 24th to find out!
New York native Leslie Thompson is one-half of the genius behind Santa Fe’s only gluten-free bakery and Boba Tea bar. With a menu that is as entertaining as delicious, Leslie is known for flavoring the names of some of her lunch and menu breakfast items with her love for hip hop culture. Thompson’s relationship with hip hop is not limited to her naming of her newest breakfast item after the late, platinum selling, Latino, hip hop pioneer Big Punisher; she also is a good friend of renowned hip hop theater director, choreographer and scholar Daniel Banks, PhD.
A Santa Fe resident, Banks has served on the faculties of the Dept. of Undergraduate Drama, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, and is currently on the faculty of the M.A. In Applied Theatre at City University of NY. The co-founder of DNAWORKS and co-director of Theatre Without Borders, Banks has worked extensively in the U.S. and abroad, having directed at such notable venues as the National Theatre of Uganda (Kampala), the Belarussian National Drama Theatre (Minsk), The Market Theatre (Johannesburg, South Africa), the Hip Hop Theatre Festival (New York and Washington, D.C.), and the Oval House (London). Banks and Thompson had been conspiring to put literature in the air for some time at Momo & Co., however it would be the intersection of another Northeasterner that set their plan into action.
Banks met Hakim Bellamy in January of 2013, after years of hearing about each other’s shared interests in hip hop and theater in New Mexico. Shortly after Bellamy returned from South Africa, the two met at a Littleglobe Creative Transformation Workshop that Banks was co-facilitating. A Littleglobe affiliate and New Jersey native, Bellamy is also the inaugural poet laureate of Albuquerque. Weeks later, Banks and Bellamy met at Momo & Co. to become better acquainted. Out of that meeting, Bellamy, Banks and Thompson decided to bring every “New” state except for New Hampshire together.
On Saturday, May 25th at 5:30pm Momo & Co. will host a reading of the two authors in Santa Fe. The reading is free to all those who attend and the bakery will remain open with Thompson’s addictive, yet gluten-free confections for sale. Banks and Bellamy will also be signing books underneath the New York City subway signs that adorn the bakery walls. Though Banks will be reading poetry from his soon to be published collection Shades, he will have copies on hand of his recently released Hip Hop Theatre anthology titled Say Word!: Voices from Hip Hop Theater for the University of Michigan Press (available in Santa Fe at Garcia Street Books). Bellamy will read from his new book, SWEAR, by West End Press and distributed by University of New Mexico Press (available in Santa Fe at Collected Works). Both men will host a Q&A and book signing after the free reading.
A week ago, CakeSpy Undercover (ireallylikefood.com) “secret-shopped” Momo & Co. and reported: “While eating gluten-free may be a necessity to some, it need not equal suffering – for anyone. So it makes me so glad places like Momo and Company exist.”
Bellamy, Banks and Thompson feel the same way about poetry. No suffering needed.
###
contact Banks (daniel@dnaworks.org) & Bellamy (tirods@gmail.com) for Interviews & Inquiries
Big Thanks to Creative Albuquerque and this video that they produced for the Creative Bravos Award Ceremony in March. I am honored to be the 2013 Emerging Creative Bravos Award recipient. Thank you. - hb
Hakim Bellamy is Albuquerque’s inaugural Poet Laureate (2012-2014), and a nationally recognized poetry slam champion. In early 2013, his first collection of poetry will be published by West End Press. For three consecutive years, he has been named “Best Poet” by Local iQ and the Weekly Alibi. He is the co-creator of the multimedia, hip hop theater incubator Urban Verbs; and facilitates performance-writing workshops for schools and community organizations across the country.
To learn more about Hakim please visit: http://hakimbe.com/
To learn more about the Creative Bravos Awards please visit:http://www.creativeabq.org/
Video/Music: Kamio Media
Thank you to Robert Woltman, the Albuquerque Journal, West End Press, UNM Press and the people of Albuquerque. The second of two book reviews. Both positive. Humbled, blessed and thankful.
See Don McIver’s review of Swear in the Local iQ.
Read this Albuquerque Journal Sunday Book Review in its entirety.
Catch me LIVE at the Opening Plenary for the National Conference for Media Reform
NATIONAL CONFERENCE FOR MEDIA REFORM starts NOW! Opening Plenary BRINGIN THE JUSTICE! Craig Aaron, Staceyann Chin, Mary Alice Crim, Juan Gonzalez ( Democracy Now!), Denver Mayor Michael B. Hancock, David Sirota, Joseph Torres, Rinku Sen, Robert W. McChesney, Carlotta Walls LaNier (Little Rock Nine), Ilyse Hogue (NARAL Pro-Choice America), Kim Gandy (National Network to End Domestic Violence) & me! Follow us on Twitter #ncmr13 or watch the live stream at FreeSpeechTV @ 3:30pm (April 5th) MST http://www.livestream.com/freespeechtv
New event added to my schedule. You won’t find this under the “What’s Next?” tab. I get to introduce my sister Jessica Helen Lopez, who gets to interview Jimmy Santiago Baca, AND YOU GET TO WATCH IT!
Get your tickets here at www.KiMoTickets.com or call 505.886.1251 to order by phone.
Written for Women in Creativity Month performance at Tricklock Theater Company’s Reptilian Lounge in March 2013
Crea+ivi+y … for Mae Jamison
Quote
“For some reasons of reason, it is overwhelmingly apparent that the female brain does not rival a man’s brain when it comes to math and science.”
so she grabbed a telescope
to see
what kind of god
would not make space
for her
what kind of idiot
savant
would phrenologize uterus
with iQ
in a respectable scholarly journal
and call his self
scientist
an alchemist
is much more
than a palmful
of snake oil
more than scales
and skin sales
more than the atheism
we cook
and crack
in the crosshairs of that scope
she saw pimps
standing on the corner
of crea+ion and nativi+y
selling acrylic
on canvas, no prints,
of Mary
and manger
sky
blacker than universe
than womb
in it
stars look like asterisks
like X, X
on top of each other
one tick-tocked clockwise
90 degrees
“Like you don’t know what time it is!”
she says
under lapcoat collar
like impo’tent men
will put their dick in
test tubes to
try and reproduce
the laboratory inside of her
futile
those same men,
however important,
will fit firearms into mouths
of mothers
on a crusade
to barren nations
frustrated
that their black magic
will never match
her birthright…
they will say
“God made Adam first.”
She will thank’em kindly
for the compliment
and call herself
evolution
smile
and tell them to adopt
while she adapts
“We are in clinical trials,
trying to reproduce a miracle.”
she belches
“The future of this species rests in an aberration.
Inconclusive, yet well-documented, evidence that one
Of their gender was able to regenerate without the other…”
she is between homo habilis
and australopithicus
she is time travel
nine months of present
and future
at the same time
she is pregnancy without penis
he is penis without progress
he is original man
primitive
she is Es-class
opposable thumb
she has made man
without man
he has tried
to clone her miracle
jealous
of how she plays god with herself
one day,
he will worship her
for the nucleus she is
instead of the warfare
he wet dreams her
to be
til then,
he will dismiss this report
file it away in the annals
of science
and tell her
this sort of study
this sort of research
is heresy
he will unbend
his lips and innuendo
his brow
as he lets her know
what is at stake
shrug it off
by trying to diffuse
a lawsuit
with a joke about sausage
and how she is
missing link
he is not
cute
or scientifically correct
he is cocky
not cunning
he is over the line
and over confident
she is over head
and over
it
he will discharge
one last shot
at her sisterhood
laughingly, ask her
if she thinks
she can fly
and she will
look him in the eye
and say
“Yes”
“Now,
ask me…
which broomstick
to prove it with.”
© Hakim Bellamy March 21, 2013
Dear Weekly Alibi (and Albuquerque),
There is no such thing as “Best Poet.” But THANK YOU for reminding me that I am not a “fad.” I love you 4X too!
Truly yours,
Hakim Bellamy
P.S. HUGE thanks to all of you who thought it was worth your time to log in, full your ballot with at least 20 things that make our city awesome, and actually include me.
P.S.S. Mad love to Levi the Poet, Zachary Kluckman and every other poet in this city as well! WE make this a cool place to be a poet.
Send your teenager to Bernalillo County’s Two-Day Digital Workshop. It costs nothing, and could be worth their future. No pressure. More details and updates at http://www.bernco.gov/KRS or @urbanverbs on Twitter.
Look what landed on ye olde desktop today! SWEAR gets a book review in Local iQ. But this endorsement from a young, Black & gifted 7 year-old is like a badge of BADASSERY “My hero is Hakim. He is my tallest best friend. This is some of his line from Roots Revival: ‘Brother you will not sleep brother. The revolution will not be televised.” Love you to Levi, all apologies to Gil Scott-Heron. #GOODGoodFriday
Read the Local iQ book review by Don McIver here.
Crea+ivi+y … for Mae Jamison
Quote
“For some reasons of reason, it is overwhelmingly apparent that the female brain does not rival a man’s brain when it comes to math and science.”
so she grabbed a telescope
to see
what kind of god
would not make space
for her
what kind of idiot
savant
would phrenologize uterus
with iQ
in a respectable scholarly journal
and call his self
scientist
an alchemist
is much more
than a palmful
of snake oil
more than scales
and skin sales
more than the atheism
we cook
and crack
in the crosshairs of that scope
she saw pimps
standing on the corner
of crea+ion and nativi+y
selling acrylic
on canvas, no prints,
of Mary
and manger
sky
blacker than universe
than womb
in it
stars look like asterisks
like X, X
on top of each other
one tick-tocked clockwise
90 degrees
“Like you don’t know what time it is!”
she says
under lapcoat collar
like impo’tent men
will put their dick in
test tubes to
try and reproduce
the laboratory inside of her
futile
those same men,
however important,
will fit firearms into mouths
of mothers
on a crusade
to barren nations
frustrated
that their black magic
will never match
her birthright…
they will say
“God made Adam first.”
She will thank’em kindly
for the compliment
and call herself
evolution
smile
and tell them to adopt
while she adapts
“We are in clinical trials,
trying to reproduce a miracle.”
she belches
“The future of this species rests in an aberration.
Inconclusive, yet well-documented, evidence that one
Of their gender was able to regenerate without the other…”
she is between homo habilis
and australopithicus
she is time travel
nine months of present
and future
at the same time
she is pregnancy without penis
he is penis without progress
he is original man
primitive
she is Es-class
opposable thumb
she has made man
without man
he has tried
to clone her miracle
jealous
of how she plays god with herself
one day,
he will worship her
for the nucleus she is
instead of the warfare
he wet dreams her
to be
til then,
he will dismiss this report
file it away in the annals
of science
and tell her
this sort of study
this sort of research
is heresy
he will unbend
his lips and innuendo
his brow
as he lets her know
what is at stake
shrug it off
by trying to diffuse
a lawsuit
with a joke about sausage
and how she is
missing link
he is not
cute
or scientifically correct
he is cocky
not cunning
he is over the line
and over confident
she is over head
and over
it
he will discharge
one last shot
at her sisterhood
laughingly, ask her
if she thinks
she can fly
and she will
look him in the eye
and say
“Yes”
“Now,
ask me…
which broomstick
to prove it with.”
© Hakim Bellamy March 21, 2013
