Come to HOME @ Hillyer

Next HOME: Friday, July 16th
Featuring: Shahid Buttar
Sponsored by Soho Tea & Coffee

Sign up at 6PM
Performances at 7PM

Free for IA&A members and performers
$5 for non-members


Hosted by Fred Joiner, curator and host of the American Poetry Museum's Intersections at the Honfleur Gallery and poet-in-residence at Busboys and Poets, Shirlington. This month's feature poet is Shahid Buttar.

Shahid Buttar is a civil rights lawyer, hip-hop & electronica MC, independent columnist, non-profit leader, grassroots community organizer, singer, dancer and poet. He has performed around the world for audiences as large as 50,000, and founded numerous grassroots groups across the country, including the Stanford Spoken Word Collective; the San Francisco Collaborative Arts Insurgency (AKA 16th & Mission); and the DC Guerrilla Poetry Insurgency. His debut CD, Get Outta Your Chair, was released in 2008 and features music from the funk, blues, hip-hop, house, drum 'n bass, and South Asian fusion traditions, including Bumpin' in My SUV and the Baghdad Blues. Shahid graduated in 2003 from Stanford Law School, and leads the Bill of Rights Defense Committee as Executive Director.

HOME is on every THIRD Friday of the month at Hillyer Art Space.

Funded in part by the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, an agency supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

International Arts & Artists
9 Hillyer Court NW, Washington, DC 20008 USA
T 202.338.0680 | F 202.333.0758 | www.artsandartists.org | info@artsandartists.org
Gallery Hours: 10am - 5pm Monday, 10am - 7pm Tuesday - Friday, 11am - 4pm Saturday.
Otherwise by appointment

International Arts & Artists (IA&A) is a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing cross-cultural understanding and exposure to the arts internationally. IA&A's services include a Traveling Exhibition Service, the Hillyer Art Space gallery, the Design Studio, the Cultural Exchange Program, and Membership Services for artists and the arts-interested public.

Speakeasy at Will's Pub

Tod Cavinass hosts a poets open mic every Tuesday night after 9PM at Will's Pub located at 1040 North Mills Avenue. When I entered the bar I noticed one lone poet writing from his bar stool perch. Tod warned me that the event never starts on time. This evening there was some sort of community swap meet or market filling the room so I wandered around and looked at the old LPs, crafts and art. They started to break down their tables and by 10PM the market was gone. Tod worked diligently to fill the room with chairs and tables and soon the room was full of poets.
On the walls of the room were dark sinister paintings featuring skulls and nudity. Tod took to the stage and introduced the first poets. Two of the poets in this sketch, the one with the blue cap and the one with the orange shirt were a poet team.The poet with the ball cap took to the stage and periodically the fellow in the orange shirt would shout out "Rewind"from the back of the audience, and the poet on stage would back up his poem then continue forward again. Their energetic delivery was inspiring.
The young girl on the far left in the sketch had the amazing ability to bend herself up like a pretzel. She is disjointed and can fold her arms in inhuman ways. I was still sketching and didn't notice her as she showed friends the first time and I was pleased when she was willing to demonstrate for me a second time.I will have to get a sketch of her some day if she is able to hold one of those uncomfortable looking poses.
A writer from the Orlando weekly read a poem about how he infected his work computer when he was researching a story about how some people surf porn sites while at work. So in the name of research he looked up some of these sites. One of them gave his computer a virus . The tech had to inform his boss that a malicious porn site was to blame.

Poet Patricia Smith at Rollins

Patricia Smith, four time winner of the National Poetry Slam, gave a talk at Bush Auditorium at Rollins college. She began her reading with the poem Building Nicole's Mama. Listen to the audio clip on the link. Patricia stressed the any aspiring poet or anyone who loves poetry should spend as much time as possible listening to the authors of the poems reading their own words. It offers a chance to hear firsthand the authors intent and meaning in tone and pacing. The child's hunger to recover from loss is primal and hit me in the gut waiting to recover my breath.
All of her poetry hit with the same force. She read several poems about Hurricane Katrina in which she personified the storm and then in another poem she gave voices to the 34 nursing home residents who were left to die in Saint Bernard's Parish in New Orleans. The poem had 34 stanzas which bought to light each residents thoughts and hopes as the storm approached.
In a question and answer session afterward Patricia stressed the importance of getting at the truth. She said authors should not write around issues or conflicts but be honest with themselves facing the truth head on. She stressed that you don't want to get to the end of your life and realize that you had not taken every chance to be completely honest in your writing.
Can a sketch ever have the emotional impact of poetry like Patricia's? I am not sure but it is certainly something to aspire towards.