to move up and down
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.
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contact Banks (daniel@dnaworks.org) & Bellamy (tirods@gmail.com) for Interviews & Inquiries
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.
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.
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.
ONE MORE WEEKEND LEFT TO SEE THE 2011 TONY AWARD WINNING, PULITZER PRIZE WINNING, OLIVIER AWARD WINNING CLYBOURNE PARK IN SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO!
Get Tickets HERE!
See reviews by Broadway World and the Albuquerque Journal!
Join us at the Historic Lensic Performing Arts Center in Santa Fe! - hb
Inaugural Poet Laureate of Albuquerque Releases His First Collection of Poems
A 35 year-old press helps get the 34 year-old author into the history books.
With more than 35 years and 100 titles to its credit, West End Press is fiercely independent publishing house founded in New Your City and now based in Albuquerque, NM. Joining a roster of distinguished West End Authors (such a Pablo Neruda and Meridel le Sueur), Albuquerque Poet Laureate Hakim Bellamy was also founded in the Northeast and now based in Albuquerque.
Though West End Press invited Bellamy to submit a manuscript many months before Bellamy was selected as Albuquerque’s first poet laureate, SWEAR is in print eleven months into his two-year appointment. With a book release party and reading announcement coming soon, here is what West End Press had to say about its newest author:
In his debut collection of hard-hitting poems, Albuquerque Poet Laureate Hakim Bellamy addresses the issues important to our day—politics, work, and art. Bellamy moves from a free-thinking attitude of deliverance to a provocative new space where the reader can reflect on the poet’s inquisition of the 1%, working class life in urban and rural America, and the transcendent value of hip hop as one of our top exports and global contributions.
Here are a few endorsements of the book:
SWEAR politicizes the human condition in a manner that balances the abstract with the concrete. Bellamy’s work is polemic like Amiri; satiric like Nietzsche; iconoclastic like Mao; passionate like Neruda. Ministering without preaching, Bellamy’s sense of metaphor whistle-blows on the top-down without fear of consequence.
Bruce George
Co-Founder of Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on HBO
Hakim Bellamy is a man engaged with the world. His words are more direct than lyrical. His poems are warning signs, headlines and prescriptions. From government to Occupy-the economic and political blues finds Bellamy wearing Langston’s hat and coat. Here is the same type of urgency Hughes felt in the 1930s after the Harlem Renaissance. Today our eyes turn to Albuquerque. SWEAR will tell you what’s coming next.
E. Ethelbert Miller
Author, activist, and director of the African American Center at Howard University
SWEAR is the physical embodiment of life in the digital age. Bellamy leaves no modern experience undisturbed. His observations, calling upon historical documents, economic structures, and political games, work to examine social and cultural norms that aren’t so normal. Swear’s themes cut through cultural, ethnic, and gendered models to thread together the human occurrences that binds us all while unveiling a pattern of institutional and systemic change. Bellamy creates an active reading experience, compelling the reader to envision how each word, clause, and statement speaks to a 21st century world, without the blinders of complacency and with an eye towards hope. Beyond simple rhetoric and a pithy turn of phrase, Bellamy takes the time to give voice to an America that is often overlooked. He embeds himself in each work, without making the works about him. I highly recommend this book.
Sonia Gipson Rankin
Director of African American Studies, University of New Mexico
For more endorsements and information (including the electronic press kit) about SWEAR, visit www.beyondpoetryink.com. Distributed by University of New Mexico Press, review copies and author interviews can be requested from West End Press by contacting Amanda Sutton at Amanda@westendpress.org. For more information on Hakim Bellamy, please visit www.hakimbe.com.
It is a distinct honor to represent the city I now call “HOME” in my hometown paper! Humbled, that a readership of 70,000 in the Philadelphia/South Jersey area is proud of how I serve community 2,000 miles away. Thank you Kim Mulford, the City of Albuquerque, my parents, the Albuquerque Poet Laureate Program, and the Courier Post! Read the article here.
Work - by hakim bellamy
(Edited via performance at TEDxABQWomen in Albuquerque, NM on December 1st. The full text is below. This poem will be published in my forthcoming book “Swear” by West End Press in March 2013)
WORK
I
There are few things more difficult
than getting lipstick
out of a blue collar
for a few things
we work
work like
lipstick on a blue collar
like three jobs
and the sex
we still can’t afford
to have
like a sex worker
fancy feet fantasies
of strawberry toes
dipped in fondue faces
while we rest
in the heel of society
I will never
let him have my feet
of running
kicking
and standing
instead of lying down
II
That pill
drug skid marks
down my esophagus
after kicking
and screaming
‘cross my tongue
awoke
took my longest finger
out of me
at 6 o’clock
erected it
to twelve
and shoved it past
his sleeping nose
there is nothing sexy
about eye sockets.
when the perpetrator
sleeps over
it’s date rape
whether the patron
paid
or not
III
my arms
are longer than his sentence
rivet strong and smooth
sometimes
for fastening
the maturation of
baby boys
to Maybe Men
other times
for the quickening
of the removal
of his sternum
from my bosom
maybe baby
maybe not
these arms
do not belong to him
they are open
to me
IV
My ankles
were pregnant
with desperate housework
when I collared him
lipstick I did not recognize
perfume I did
but did not blame her for being a victim
did not blame my hands
for refusing to wash
anymore of his fucking shirts
did not blame god
for leaving my daughter’s father
and his patriarchal paycheck
for putting my baby girl
on my back
putting food and shelter
on my shoulders
making my living
off my ass
my brain
cannot be judged by its cover,
my complexion, nor my circumstance
not where I clock in
or clock out
I have a degree
in sociology
and survival
and only one
is coming in handy
V
My daughter
is my body of labor
a woman now
born from my rib
pushed from my pelvis
apple of my Eve
I named her “Eden”
she has nested with serpents
seen me
serve leg, thigh and breast
to a tapeworm society
that cannibalizes its women
she’s seen
my serviceable body parts
removed
used to fill their holes
she’s seen my heart overlooked
cast plate-side
like a gizzard
she’s seen them
eat me
from the inside
out
VI
she barely remembers
my housewife days
of not lifting a finger
to her father
and him
putting himself
where ever he wanted
his fists
as hard as he wanted
and I chose
bait instead of bitch
I chose pussy
instead of prison
because I rather teach her
teach her
that there is dirt
underneath every French manicure
that working girls
get their ass kicked for a living
that’s a choice for some
less of a choice for others
but so is getting your ass kicked
for love
for life
teach her
the difference between sale and sacrifice
is the cost and the price
like the difference between
pay equity and fair wage
teach her the difference between
high risk career
and poor life choices
that either way we have rights
even when they put their palms
over our voices
I taught her that
I’d rather give the street
what her father repeatedly took
even pride
what she learned from me
is the value of her body
for better or for worse
she learned not to stay for bullshit
like “relationships take work”
work takes work
and work consists
of whatever a body
is obliged to do.
Some people you love.
Some people you don’t.
And the rest somewhere in between…will be performing LIVE at the Moonlight Lounge.
I’ve known Justin and Olivia for quite sometime. It’s been an honor to see them grow. Now, I get to help welcome them back to Burque for the 1st time since they mved to NYC! Yes, THAT NYC. Come join us, pre-sale tix are half price here.
