Be-Side

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.

Read the results of the Best of Burque 2013 Readers’ Poll.

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.

Honored to be the recipient of the 2013 Emerging Creative Bravos on Saturday evening. Each Creative Bravos award recipient got the opportunity for a 30 sec. acceptance speech. In my absence (I was completing my role as Albert/Kevin Fusion Theatre Company’s 10-show run of Bruce Norris’ award-winning play Clybourne Park), My son hit it out the park with “Thank You for my daddy!” Better and shorter than anything I coulda come up with. Proud of my lil’ man. A huge thanks to his mother, Tracey, for escorting him.

Here is my social media “acceptance speech” (status update) from before my 7:30pm call to the Lensic Performing Arts Center in Santa Fe: 

Thank you Creative Albuquerque and all those who daily make it their job to honor & empower artists in ABQ. My son will be accepting my Creative Bravos award tonight as I create art in Santa Fe this evening. But THANK YOU to my fellow Bravos honorees and all behind the scenes that make sure EVERY Burqueno has access to art regardless of cash or class.

And from this article about the Creative Bravos award in ABQ Arts & Entertainment:

Selected as this year’s Emerging Creative award recipient, Albuquerque’s inaugural Poet Laureate (2012-14) and nationally recognized poetry slam champion, Hakim Bellamy, is one whose body of achievements continues to grow alongside his artistic ambitions. “I’m a little young for a lifetime achievement award, but this is what the Emerging Creative Bravos feels like. It feels like a humble validation and acknowledgment of my art as ‘professional,’ which is important for up and coming artists who do what I do and look like me but may have never thought of declaring themselves a poet, until they witnessed me doing the same,” says Bellamy.

This article about the 2013 Creative Bravos Award recipients was published in the Albuquerque Journal.

Thank you, thank you, thank you … I mean it.

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.

I am proud to be recognized by the New Mexico State Legislature on the floor of the State Senate, thanks to Senator Tim Keller. I am equally proud to be part of the International Day/Asian American Day at the State Legislature festivities…where politics and poetry play nicely. Thank you New Mexico!

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.