Poetry/Singing/Dancing at Mombar in Astoria Queens

The NYU Poetry Census class hit the streets of Queens to have lunch at Mombar cafe, owned, operated and sculpted by Moustafa El Sayed. Many students used this colorful environment and delicious food as a space for sharing creative work, gearing up for a larger performance come December 13th at the Bowery Poetry Club. Some of this work is reproduced below.

-------

What's a poetry census?

Origin:
1605–15; < L: a listing and property assessment of citizens, equiv. to cēns(ēre) to assess, register (citizens) in a census + -tus suffix of v. action; for -s- in place of -st- see censor

In the oral tradition, the census would be sung and performed, no separation between the living and dead, a celebration of names, lives and history. In that spirit, Bob Holman's "Art & the Public Sphere" class is spreading out all over the City, using Barack Obama's notes on how he became a community organizer as a guide, to find poets writing in indigenous languages, languages other than English. The performance on Sunday, Dec 13, 5pm, Bowery Poetry Club, will bring together poets writing in over twenty languages, Ladino and Mandinke and Urdu and Tagalog and Rom -- the names alone are enough to conjure up a whole new wordscape for a landscape.