Suheir Hammad, a Palestinian-American poet and activist now based in New York, writes about being a Muslim immigrant and also a woman challenging conventions. Spotted by Russell Simmons for Def Poetry Jam, she has performed pieces about love in the time of war, exoticising beauty, and a touching ode to her father, among many others. Suheir has just produced and released her first feature film Salt of This Sea, up for the Cannes Films Festival and possibly an Oscar, and recently performed in Ramallah for the 2009 Palestinian Festival of Literature.
posted by divabat on Jul 7, 2009 - 5 comments

This f*cking election. A babble tower.
posted by digaman on Nov 2, 2008 - 100 comments

Wayne White's paintings [more inside]
posted by 1f2frfbf on Dec 20, 2007 - 19 comments

Top Two News Words (By Hour). "Top news sources are parsed by a computer every hour and the two most frequently used words are determined and printed out on a continuous sheet of paper." An art project by Rick Valentin, better known to late-80's & mid-90's indie-rock fans as the lead singer of the Poster Children. An updated-hourly RSS feed is also available.
posted by melorama on Sep 3, 2007 - 14 comments

The British Council polls non-English speakers for the seventy most beautiful English words. Mother comes out on top (as ever), with lullaby, oi (my favourite), and — bizarrely — hen night also appearing. I much prefer the examples of Wilfred Funk (and others): dawn, chalice and gossamer, for instance [source origin]. Beautiful words can be combined to form beautiful phrases and sometimes more. German words are also beautiful; habseligkeiten (meaning property), and such. Words can also be curious, people have observed; but also be truly awful, as a quick search of the phrases "global experience" and "leading edge" will attest.
posted by nthdegx on Nov 25, 2004 - 58 comments

Becoming a word. Just over a year ago, Shelley Jackson launched the Skin project, which aimed to tattoo a story one word at a time onto other people. Shelley herself has the title, and here's an essay from a the. I hope the story isn't set on Anglesey.
posted by nylon on Sep 28, 2004 - 8 comments

A Year Of Days In Poetry: Today is the day Chaucer died. James Beattie, Macaulay and John Berryman were born on this same day. This is just one of the ways of entering Ian Lancashire's magnificent, monumental Representative Poetry Online. The timeline, the glossary of poetical terms and the fascinating collection of poets' writings on poetry are equally rich and generous. In a word, bliss.
posted by MiguelCardoso on Oct 25, 2002 - 10 comments