I apologize for the want of posts in the past week or so. For various reasons, this poetic is under an indefinite hiatus.

I will continue to post super cool arts events and news on the second blog I manage: drepoetic. Please check it out to keep gettin your art on.

Thanks to all those of you who have dropped by every once in a while to check this blog out!

Best,

drethepoet

At the Arlington Arts Center this August and September, Washington independent curator, artist, teacher, and critic Rex Weil will present a show focused on the intersection of politics and art-terrain that seldom seems to be explored by artists and galleries in and around the nation’s capital.

Picturing Politics 2008 will supply a corrective, examining a wide array of strategies used in the contemporary visual arts for addressing controversial issues and promoting progressive social change-all against the backdrop of a political landscape dominated by mass media.

PICTURING POLITICS 2008: Artists Speak to Power
Curated by Rex Weil

Show Dates: August 15 – September 27, 2008
Reception: Friday, September 5, 6:00 – 9:00pm
Location: Arlington Arts Center, 3550 Wilson Blvd, Arlington VA

Further exhibit details at the Arlington Arts Center website.

From the NYTimes:

Mahmoud Darwish, whose searing lyrics on Palestinian exile and tender verse on the human condition led him to be widely viewed as the pre-eminent man of Palestinian letters as well as one of the greatest contemporary Arab poets, died Saturday night in Houston after complications from heart surgery. He was 67.

Read more …

Matcha: Drunken Fist at the Asian Art Museum, SF, 5:00-9:00 pm

and

APAture Runway II at the Gray Area Gallery, 7:30-10:30 pm

MATCHA: Drunken Fist
Thursday, August 7
5 to 9 pm
FREE with museum admission ($5 after 5 pm)

You’ve seen Jet Li do it in movies—now watch former champion US World Team Member, Philip Wong and former Bejing Wushu Team champion Zhang Hong Mei lead members of Bay Area martial arts school Pacific Wushu in a dynamic, jaw-dropping demonstration. View the museum’s summer exhibition Power & Glory: Court Arts of China’s Ming Dynasty, jump on guided gallery tours of Asian weaponry, try out a hands-on art activity, tune in to an in-depth talk on shaolin martial arts, or “kick it” with the DJ Phatrick, a drink, and friends.

Drunken Fist details at the Asian Art Museum website.

and

APAture Runway II is KSW’s second annual fashion show of emerging designers. Runway II will showcase collections from some of today’s freshest local talent, followed by a live auction of designer goods hosted by Joshua Lim.

FEATURING: Feral Childe, Isabelle Le, Lucio Montana, Yola Ng and more!

DATE: August 7, 2008, 7:30-10:30 pm

PLACE: Gray Area Gallery, 1515 Folsom St.

COST: $10 at the door or in advance. Buy your tickets now! Asian Art Museum MATCHA ticket holders will receive a 50% discount on admission at the door.

All proceeds will help fund KSW’s 10th annual APAture festival.

More info on the APAture Runway at the Kearny Street Workshop website.

Nearly two-thirds of the 76 teams in the National Poetry Slam competed in their first bouts on Tuesday night at multiple venues throughout downtown Madison. The bout winners on Tuesday were Boston Cantab, SlamCharlotte, Austin Poetry Slam, NoCoast Writers Collective from Lincoln, Hayti Heritage Center from Durham, The City Slam from San Francisco, Chicago Mental Graffiti, New York Urbana Poetry Slam, San Diego Slam, New York louderARTS, Art Amok in Atlanta, and Denver Nuba.

The Milwaukee team also competed in its first bout, coming in second to SlamCharlotte and ahead of Phoenix and Boise in the first slam on the Evjue Stage at the Bartell Theatre.

The complete listing of scores is provided here by the National Poetry Slam, and the teams are currently ranked as follows:

	TEAM	Rank	Score		TEAM	Rank	Score
	New York UR	1	118.2		Decatur	3	114.5
	Denver NU	1	116.8		Dallas DP	3	110.3
	San Francisco	1	114.1		Fayetteville	3	107.6
	San Diego	1	112.6		White Plains	3	107.4
	New York LA	1	112.1		Columbus WB	3	107.1

Read the rest of this article at the Isthmus.

Flobots is beyond the spoken word, beyond music, beyond hip hop, beyond poetry. They take the word to a whole new level.

Here is an unofficial, but very well put-together video by d9studios of “There is a war going on for your mind”:

Also check out the Flobots latest video, “Handlebars”:

Check these magical soundsmiths at flobots.com. Their album, Fight With Tools, is out in stores now.

The hum on the opening day at the National Hip-Hop Political Convention was that Ludacris had played himself. Badly.

 Read the rest after the jump.

Green Party vice presidential candidate Rosa Clemente put it best, “I have no love for Hillary’s politics and what it’s done to our folks, but I could feel her going through all the stuff she’s had to go through as a woman.”

Rap can say whatever it wants, and right now it wants to talk about the elections. That’s cool.

But Ludacris seemed to want to reduce serious politics to stale old battle rhymes. Come on, man. You got a degree from Georgia State. Rap deserves more than that.

We know that these days it’s gangsta to be political. But if you really want to battle on that level, step up your game, else you’ll just become another tool for the right-wing talk-show circuit.

Shoot, even Jeezy came with it when it was his turn.

As Marc Lamont Hill put it in his rousing closing address yesterday re: Lupe, right now is no time to dumb it down.

Oddly enough, all this came on a day that the National Hip-Hop Political Convention focused on the educational possibilities of hip-hop. Hip-hop artists, teachers, professors, grad students, folks from the Hip-Hop Think Tank, and not a few young heads from the street came to UNLV yesterday to get into the ability of hip-hop to open minds.

Among the talks, rapper Asheru presented curriculum he had put together, using hip-hop songs by Nas, Common, Lauryn Hill, and even his own work for The Boondocks. He showed how you could take one song–say Mos Def’s “New World Water”–and break it down for english teachers, social studies teachers, and science teachers, using it to teach lessons about everything from poetry to hydrology. All of this was news we could use.

Listening, Luda?

Hip hop is coming into the fore and artists speakin on politics are being heard for a change. If these are the winds we are facing you better have your act together because people are listening to every word. Check yoself Luda.

In the arsenal of the culture wars, rap music remains somewhat radioactive — and Barack Obama now finds himself exposed.

Avowed Obama supporter Ludacris on Wednesday released a freewheeling song called “Politics” in which he repeatedly praised the candidate — as well as himself, for having found a home on the senator’s iPod. But the Atlanta rapper also used a derogatory term to describe Hillary Clinton; asserted that John McCain should be in a wheelchair, not the White House; and declared that President Bush “is mentally handicapped.”

Gee, thanks for the endorsement, Luda!

Some of the Democrat’s most vocal (literally) supporters are sticking him with a hip-hop dilemma: how to respond to an art form that has a long history as a cultural wedge issue but whose fans and wildly unpredictable practitioners are a part of his base?

Read the rest of the article …

Today, the National Hip-Hop Political Convention opens in Las Vegas.

Thousands are expected to attend the Convention, with some coming from as far as Colombia and South Korea yesterday for the opening b-boy battle, that featured a showdown between Las Vegas’s Knucklehead Zoo and the R16 champs, Gamblerz.

They will be discussing issues like the criminalization of youth, youth violence, the right of return on the Gulf Coast, media justice, sexism in hip-hop, economic justice, Black-Brown solidarity, global warming, liberation theology, and vote disenfranchisement. (I’m speaking today at an all-day symposium on the place of hip-hop in academia. alongside folks like Asheru, Byron Hurt, Marc Lamont Hill, and many others.)

Dozens of skills-building trainings around voter registration, lobbying, organizing, media, film making, and even krumping will be held, showing that the organizers draw no distinction between arts and social justice. Some of the best recent underground films on hip-hop–including “African Underground: Democracy in Dakar” and “Masizakhe: Let Us Build Together”–bring a distinctly global view of hip-hop to the event.

On Sunday Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney will give the closing address and the Convention will revise and update their hip-hop political agenda.

Keep your eye here for reports back over the coming days.

This is more than just a hobby. This feeds your soul.
- Dasha Kelly, poet

In its eighteenth year the National Poetry Slam will bring together 84 teams from across the country and even Europe to Madison, Wisconsin compete for the national poetry slam championship title.

The slam this year is a part of the four day Lyrics on the Lake Festival which will include a series of writing circles, special poet showcases, and workshops on topics as varied as screen writing, publishing, and how to write a slam.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has some prepping poets speaking on the festival and slam in this back door preview:

“I call it verbal acrobatics. I call it entertainment, education, enlightenment or aggravation depending on what’s going on, but it’s definitely a room full of people who are in a moment together, and it’s electric,” [Dasha] Kelly said.

Read more …

The Lyrics on the Lake Festival and National Poetry Slam opens August 3 and runs through August 9. Visit nps2008.com for a full schedule of the National Poetry Slam and other events during the week.