AD.DAR Presents: Mother Tongues.

Last week I hosted a spoken word open mic and book launch in collaboration with my poetry students at AD.DAR Culture Center. The evening saw poets from all over the world read poetry in Arabic, Farsi, English, Turkish and so on, even though I was hosting it was so beautiful to see so many people come together and celebrate the written and spoken word and power of speech. Especially when so many of us are coming from broken homelands and countries where ours and so many others’ voices have been silenced.

We released a chapbook of some poems with help from our buddies at Spoken Word Istanbul also.

Here’s one of the poems.

At times I wonder the change I’ve been through

Though at times I wonder what things didn’t change too

And so on I lived

Unaware of my hidden flaws,

Unviewed by, but yet viewed by I,

So this trip goes on,

Unstoppable

Like a train going endlessly.

 Nawrus Almatar