|
Def Poetry Jam
''Russell Simmons presents Def Poetry'', better known as simply ''Def Poetry Jam'' or ''Def Poetry'', is a spoken word poetry television series hosted by Mos Def and airing on HBO between 2002 and 2007. The series features performances by established and up-and-coming spoken word poets. Performances also include special appearances by well-known actors and musicians, as well as occasional performances by Mos Def himself. Co-created by Bruce George, Danny Simmons, Deborah Pointer, Stan Lathan, and Russell Simmons, the show is a spin-off of the popular ''Def Comedy Jam'' which began airing on HBO in the 1990s. As with ''Def Comedy'', Simmons appears at the end of every episode to thank the audience. The series included historical legendary poets such as, The Last Poets, Nikki Giovanni, Amiri Baraka and Sonya Sanchez. It also featured poets, Saul Williams, J. Ivy, Jessica Care-Moore and Lemon. Though technically not a poetry slam, ''Def Poetry'' has become heavily associated wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mos Def
Yasiin Bey (; born Dante Terrell Smith, December 11, 1973), previously and more commonly known by his stage name Mos Def (), is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, and actor. His hip hop career began in 1994, alongside his siblings in the short-lived rap group Urban Thermo Dynamics (UTD), after which they appeared on albums by Da Bush Babees and De La Soul. He formed the duo Black Star, alongside fellow Brooklyn-based rapper Talib Kweli, and in 1998 they released their debut album ''Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star'', featuring the singles " Definition" and "Respiration". He was featured on the roster of Rawkus Records and in 1999 released his solo debut, ''Black on Both Sides''. His debut was followed by ''The New Danger'' (2004), ''True Magic'' (2006), and ''The Ecstatic'' (2009). About.com listed him 14th on its "50 Greatest Rappers of All Time". His hits include " Oh No", "Ms. Fat Booty", and "Mathematics". He was a child actor in television films, sitcoms, and th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alix Olson
Alix L. Olson (born 1975) is an American poet who works exclusively in spoken word. She graduated from Wesleyan University in 1997 and uses her work to address issues of capitalism, racism, sexism, homophobia, heterosexism, misogyny, and patriarchy. She identifies as a queer feminist. Early years and education Alix Olson was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in 1975 to parents who were both politically-minded professors and held ideals that she believes were passed along to her. She has recalled early childhood memories sitting under a table coloring protest signs. Olson attended Stockholm University in 1996. She received a BA from Wesleyan University in 2007 and a PhD in political science from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst with a graduate certificate in advanced feminist studies. Career Olson taught as faculty at the Juniper Institute for Young Writers at University of Massachusetts at Amherst in Summer 2011 and 2012, at CSU Summer Arts at California State Univ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georgia Me
Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the country in the Caucasus ** Kingdom of Georgia, a medieval kingdom ** Georgia within the Russian Empire ** Democratic Republic of Georgia, established following the Russian Revolution ** Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, a constituent of the Soviet Union * Related to the US state ** Province of Georgia, one of the thirteen American colonies established by Great Britain in what became the United States ** Georgia in the American Civil War, the State of Georgia within the Confederate States of America. Other places * 359 Georgia, an asteroid * New Georgia, Solomon Islands * South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Canada * Georgia Street, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada * Strait of Georgia, British Columbia, Canada United K ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lemon (poet)
Lemon Andersen (born Andrew Andersen; April 21, 1975) is an American poet, spoken word artist and actor. He is sometimes credited as Lemon. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, he still resides there. He is the son of Milagros "Mili" Quiñones, from Puerto Rico, and Peter Andersen, a Norwegian-American from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Growing up in poverty, as a teenager Lemon experienced the successive deaths of his stepfather, father, and mother from complications of heroin abuse and AIDS, leaving him and his older brother orphaned and forced to fend for themselves. Lemon became involved in serious crime, but his growing passion first for hip hop and then acting, and a succession of gifted mentors who recognized and nurtured his theatrical talent, resulted in his development into the powerful artist portrayed in ''County of Kings'' and ''Lemon''. Today a much-lauded "wordsmith who thinks deeply about the sounds of syllables", Lemon Andersen's writing and live performances have ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Staceyann Chin
Staceyann Chin (born December 25, 1972) is a spoken-word poet, performing artist and LGBT rights political activist. Her work has been published in ''The New York Times'', ''The Washington Post'', and the ''Pittsburgh Daily'', and has been featured on ''60 Minutes''. She was also featured on ''The Oprah Winfrey Show'', where she shared her struggles growing up as a gay person in Jamaica. Chin's first full-length poetry collection was published in 2019. Personal life Chin was born in Jamaica but now lives in New York City, in Brooklyn. She is of Chinese-Jamaican and Afro-Jamaican descent. She announced in 2011 that she was pregnant with her first child, giving birth to daughter Zuri in January 2012. She has been candid about her pregnancy by means of in-vitro fertilization, and wrote about her experiences as a pregnant, single lesbian in a guest blog for the ''Huffington Post''. Career Openly lesbian, she has been an "out poet and political activist" since 1998. In addition to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Suheir Hammad
Suheir Hammad (born October 25, 1973) is an American poet, author, actress, performer, and political activist. Biography She was born in Amman, Jordan. Her parents were Palestinian refugees who immigrated along with their daughter to Brooklyn, New York City when she was five years old. Her parents later moved to Staten Island. As an adolescent growing up in Brooklyn, Hammad was heavily influenced by Brooklyn's vibrant hip-hop scene. She had also absorbed the stories from her parents and grandparents of life in their hometown of Lydda, before the 1948 Palestinian exodus, and of the suffering they endured afterward, first in the Gaza Strip and then in Jordan. From these disparate influences Hammad was able to weave into her work a common narrative of dispossession, not only in her capacity as an immigrant, a Palestinian and a Muslim, but as a woman struggling against society's inherent sexism and as a poet in her own right. When hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons came across he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Broadway Theatre
Broadway theatre,Although ''theater'' is generally the spelling for this common noun in the United States (see American and British English spelling differences), 130 of the 144 extant and extinct Broadway venues use (used) the spelling ''Theatre'' as the proper noun in their names (12 others used neither), with many performers and trade groups for live dramatic presentations also using the spelling ''theatre''. or Broadway, are the theatrical performances presented in the 41 professional theatres, each with 500 or more seats, located in the Theater District and the Lincoln Center along Broadway, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Broadway and London's West End together represent the highest commercial level of live theater in the English-speaking world. While the thoroughfare is eponymous with the district and its collection of 41 theaters, and it is also closely identified with Times Square, only three of the theaters are located on Broadway itself (namely the Broadwa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marc Smith (American Poet)
Marc Kelly Smith (born 1949) is an American poet and founder of the poetry slam movement, for which he received the nickname Slam Papi. Smith was born in 1949 and grew up on the southeast side of Chicago. He attended/graduated Charles P. Caldwell Elementary School and James H. Bowen High School. Smith spent most of his young life as a construction worker, but has written poetry since he was 19. He considers himself a socialist. Uptown Poetry Slam Smith started at an open mic night at the Get Me High lounge in November 1984 called the Monday Night Poetry Reading. Even as poets scoffed at artists "performing" their work, rather than genteelly "reading" it, the event grew in popularity. Smith saw his approach as an " up yours" to establishment poets he considered snooty and effete, because at their events, "no one was listening". According to Smith, who once attended a conventional reading with his manuscripts concealed inside a newspaper, With a like-minded troupe, Smith hoste ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf
''for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf'' is Ntozake Shange's first work and most acclaimed theater piece, which premiered in 1976. It consists of a series of poetic monologues to be accompanied by dance movements and music, a form Shange coined as the choreopoem. ''for colored girls...'' tells the stories of seven women who have suffered oppression in a racist and sexist society. As a choreopoem, the piece is a series of 20 separate poems choreographed to music that weaves interconnected stories of love, empowerment, struggle and loss into a complex representation of sisterhood. The cast consists of seven nameless African-American women only identified by the colors they are assigned. They are the lady in red, lady in orange, lady in yellow, lady in green, lady in blue, lady in brown, and lady in purple. Subjects from rape, abandonment, abortion and domestic violence are tackled. Shange originally wrote the monologues as separate poems in 197 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ntozake Shange
Ntozake Shange ( ; FilmReference.com. Retrieved October 27, 2018. October 18, 1948 – October 27, 2018) was an American playwright and poet. As a , she addressed issues relating to and Black power in much of her work. She is best known for her -winning play, '' |
Bob Holman
Bob Holman is an American poet and poetry activist, most closely identified with the oral tradition, the spoken word, and poetry slam. As a promoter of poetry in many media, Holman has spent the last four decades working variously as an author, editor, publisher, performer, emcee of live events, director of theatrical productions, producer of films and television programs, record label executive, university professor, and archivist. He was described by Henry Louis Gates Jr. in ''The New Yorker'' as "the postmodern promoter who has done more to bring poetry to cafes and bars than anyone since Ferlinghetti." Early years Holman was born in LaFollette, Tennessee in 1948 and raised in Harlan, Kentucky, the child of "a coal miner's daughter and the only Jew in town." His father committed suicide when Holman was two. After his mother remarried, Holman was raised in rural Ohio. He attended Columbia College and graduated in 1970 with a degree in English. At Columbia, Holman studied wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soft Skull Press
Counterpoint LLC was a publishing company distributed by Perseus Books Group launched in 2007. It was formed from the consolidation of three presses: Perseus' Counterpoint Press, Avalon Publishing Group's Shoemaker & Hoard and the independent Soft Skull Press. The company published books under the Counterpoint Press and Soft Skull Press imprints. Counterpoint also entered into an agreement for the production, marketing and distribution of approximately eight Sierra Club book titles each year. Both Wendell Berry and poet Gary Snyder were investors in Counterpoint, with both of their works currently being published by the Counterpoint imprint. Jack Shoemaker, Vice-president and editorial director of Counterpoint, had worked with both authors in other companies for more than thirty years. Counterpoint published some works by Albanian author Ismail Kadare, including '' A Girl in Exile'', ''The Traitor’s Niche'', and '' The Doll: A Portrait of My Mother''. Counterpoint merged in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
