Tag: poetry

Poetry, Theatre

‘If I Awaken In Los Angeles’ Offers Cultural Pride, Influence, and a Love Letter to the City

Elijah Isaiah Johnson

Hollywood Boulevard on a Friday Night is, perhaps, most famous for its proximity to performance art: from the TCL and El Capitan Theaters to open air venues like the iconic Hollywood Bowl and The Ford — the latter of which came alive under the stars and against the applause of the concert crowd across the street, thanks to Get Lit – Words Ignite’s latest live presentation, If I Awaken In Los Angeles.

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Reviews, Theatre

A Los Angeles Theatre Review: ‘Cambodian Rock Band’

Edward Hong

Ever since the world premiere of Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band at the South Coast Repertory back in 2018, there have been nothing but hype and rave reviews as it quickly became an immensely successful and popular production that had many others take place around the United States, with its most significant ones being at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Signature Theatre in New York.

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Art, Poetry

Get Lit Celebrates Poetry Month and its 13th Annual Classic Slam

Elijah Isaiah Johnson

With the pre-Golden Hour sun higher up and a touch brighter than usual for 4:00 PM, the Wilshire Ebell Theatre was rolling out the literal red carpet for some of art’s unsung and most prolific offspring: Get Lit’s Words Ignite Annual Classic Poetry Slam in its 13th incarnation, continuing to raise the next and support the current generation of young poets, writers and thinkers.

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Interview, Poetry

Poetry, Community, and Deliverance: How KeiRock is Impacting Spoken Word

Elijah Isaiah Johnson

It was November 19, and LA’s West Side was wrapped in a breeze uncharacteristic of a California night, but was a welcome interruption to the heatwaves the state is known for. The historic Odyssey Theater Ensemble, home of some of the city’s most multi-cultural plays and productions, housed the Sippin’ Poetry Slam Food Drive, hosted by the multi-hyphenated talent, poet, actor, and artist combo, Ahkei “KeiRock” Togun.

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Movies, Poetry

Mental Health Awareness Takes Center Stage at Get Lit’s ‘Our Worlds Collide’ Screening

Elijah Isaiah Johnson

Palm trees wrapped around the streets of Beverly Hills, and gorgeous golden rope lights wrapped around them, on the way to the exclusive William Morris Endeavour Screening Room, located near the heart of one of California’s most famous zip-codes.

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Music, Podcasts

Southern Fried Asian: Nat Myers

Southern Fried Asian

Southern Fried Asian returns for a special AAPI Heritage Month episode featuring Kentucky-based blues musician, Nat Myers! He and Keith discuss the events that inspired his forthcoming album, Yellow Peril and his connection to Aquaman himself, Jason Momoa.

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Art, Poetry

Get Lit Closes Out Poetry Month with Annual Classic Slam Competition Finals

Elijah Isaiah Johnson

After a record breaking cold spell across usually-sunny California, the customary 80-degree weather had begun to pick up again in mid April; as the sun set over South Broadway’s historic Ace Hotel Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles, the golden views and massive crowds were a fitting way to welcome in students, poets, writers and songwriters from far and wide to the annual 2023 Classic Slam Competition Finals.

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Comics, Podcasts, Poetry

Southern Fried Asian: Greg Pak Returns

Southern Fried Asian

Southern Fried Asian is back and so is one of our previous guests. Keith welcomes back Greg Pak — whose moving new autobiographical project I Belong to You / Motherland is being turned into a choral performance in Austin — to discuss belonging and loss and share memories of his mother and childhood in Texas.

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Books, Interview

Ibi Zoboi on Writing a Biographical Constellation of Octavia Butler

Shannon Gibney

Award-winning author Ibi Zoboi has penned a “biographical constellation” of the late, great Black feminist sci-fi writer Octavia Butler. Called Star Child (Dutton, January 2022), the book contains poems, short essays, and actual fragments of Butler’s own writing and musings.

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Poetry, Streaming, Television1 Comment

‘Dickinson’ Final Season: Hailee Steinfeld Drops a New Verse

Dominic Mah

Because I cannot wait for Kate —
Apple kindly drops Dickinson Season 3 —
The final part of Emily Dickinson/Hailee Steinfeld’s quest for Self —
And Immortality.

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Podcasts, Poetry

Southern Fried Asian: Luisa A. Igloria

Southern Fried Asian

On a brand new Southern Fried Asian, Keith reconnects with his former college professor, Luisa A. Igloria, who was just named the first Filipina American poet laureate of Virginia.

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Music, School of Hard NOCs, Theatre

#EduHam: ‘Hamilton’ Puts History in the Hands of the Future

Constance Gibbs

”This is for ones like us, that had big hopes and dreams but didn’t make it.” — Lea Ibragimova, Shanae Bennett, and Valentina Vidal Ortega from Rachel Carson High School for Coastal Studies

There’s nothing like seeing Hamilton the Musical with a crowd of high school juniors. They laugh at the sex jokes, they get squirmy about death, and they echo the chorus of “ohhhh” at every diss in the show. Having seen Hamilton three times now (yes, I’m bragging a little — you would too), it was absolutely the best audience to see the show with. But it wasn’t the centerpiece of the day.

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Music, Podcasts1 Comment

Southern Fried Asian: G Yamazawa

Southern Fried Asian

On this week’s episode of Southern Fried Asian, Keith talks to spoken word and hip-hop artist G Yamazawa, whose debut album, Shouts to Durham, and breakthrough single/video “North Cack” have taken the internet by storm.

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Literature, School of Hard NOCs

KidLit: Recommended Reading on Justice and Understanding

Bao Phi

Originally posted at The Writer’s Block

At a time of great unease and injustice, those of us who are parents of children have a challenge ahead of us. Most of our kids will be exposed to the happenings of the world, and well they should. At the same time, what books can we read to them that will help them understand, and provide tools they will need to survive, thrive, and engage? We reached out to several Minnesota writers with children to compile this list of suggestions. This is by no means definitive, nor complete.

This list was compiled by Kurtis Scaletta, Shannon Gibney, Lana Barkawi, Kathryn Savage, Molly Beth Griffin, Sarah Park Dahlen, Bao Phi, and Lorena Duarte Armstrong.

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Guest Post, Movies5 Comments

Hollywood’s Dream of a Faceless Rumi

Guest N.O.C.

Earlier this month we learned that David Franzoni, the Oscar-nominated writer and Oscar-winning producer of Gladiator, is working on a new screenplay based on the life of Persian poet and scholar Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī.

We also learned, in an interview with The Guardian, that the writer would like Rumi to be played in this film by a white man.

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Hard N.O.C. Life, Podcasts

NOC x BNP at #CrossLines with Lauren Bullock

The Nerds of Color

An historic event occurred during our special live recordings of Hard NOC Life from the Smithsonian’s CrossLines pop-up culture lab on intersectionality. The NOC and Black Nerd Problems formed a Nerd Voltron when we were joined by BNP’s own Lauren Bullock.

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Art, Comics, Interview

APAture2015: Interview with Jason Bayani

Alice Wong

We continue our spotlight on Kearny Street Workshop and its APAture2015: Future Tense, a series of showcases featuring emerging artists from the San Francisco Bay Area. This Saturday, October 10, the Comics & Illustration Showcase will feature a number of comic book artists. Yesterday was my interview with artist Thi Bui. Today, I chat with Jason Bayani, Program Manager of Kearny Street Workshop.

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Martial Arts, Poetry

NOC Poetry: For Bruce, 11/27/40 – 7/20/73

Keith Chow

A poem for Bruce we repost on the anniversaries of his birth and of his death.

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Art, Gone Too Soon, Poetry1 Comment

R.I.P. Maya Angelou

Keith Chow

We are all saddened by the loss of Maya Angelou, who has passed away at the age of 86. Upon hearing about Angelou’s passing, I immediately thought about Life Doesn’t Frighten Me, a book published in the mid-1990s that paired her poetry with the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat.

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Gone Too Soon, Literature, Poetry1 Comment

NOC Poetry: R.I.P. Amiri Baraka

Keith Chow

The world lost a titan of the Black Arts Movement when the poet Amiri Baraka passed away today in Newark, New Jersey after several weeks of hospitalization. Baraka was 79 years old.

On twitter, honorary NOC Saladin Ahmed wondered if Baraka was the first poet to reference superheroes in his work.

The poem Ahmed was referring to, “In Memory of Radio,” comes from Baraka’s first collection of poetry, Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, which has been reprinted below. In it, Baraka — then still known as Leroi Jones — uses The Shadow to bookend the poem:

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Lit Week, Poetry, Video Games4 Comments

NOC Poetry: “Open Letter to El Fuerte”

Rodrigo Sanchez-Chavarria

I am a video game player. There is no denying that. But I am also a father. So finding balance between family obligations and video games can be daunting at times. So I allow myself to buy one video game — at full retail price — a year. Well one year, I decided that the game I wanted was Street Fighter IV. I’ve been a big SF fan since SFII. My cousins and I would play that game to death in my uncle’s living room to the point that we were banished from the T.V.

I was extremely surprised that there was a character of Mexican heritage in the game, so that was another incentive for purchasing it. When I chose El Fuerte as my character, I was surprised that, well, he was shorter then Blanka, his quest is to find good recipes, really has no projectile moves, and, let’s be real, resembles a rejected understudy to Rey Mysterio Jr.

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Lit Week, Literature, Poetry

NOC Poetry: “Supa Soul Sistas”

Walidah Imarisha

In honor of the Nerds of Color Lit Week, I wanted to share a piece called “Supa Soul Sista.” I wrote and performed it with Turiya Autry and our poetry duo Good Sista/Bad Sista a few years ago.

We wrote it because we are both unabashed nerds. And we are also both Black feminist poets, professors and activist/organizers. As many folks reading this blog know, this mix can cause a bigger explosion than a warp core breach in the matter/anti-matter containment unit on the Starship Enterprise. Often there are no images of anyone who looks like us in comics or in sci-fi, and those folks who do are not authentic representations, but are often more ideas of what white male writers think Black women are.

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