Author: cserea120

WCW-Roger Sedarat

Williams Readings-Sept2018.indd

September is National Translation Month! Join us at the Williams Center to celebrate. Our feature this month is the Iranian-American poet and translator Roger Sedarat who will present a dramatic performance based on his recent poetry collection Haji as Puppet: an Orientalist Burlesque, which interrogates and challenges the western gaze toward the Middle East.

For over 15 years, Sedarat has been performing poetry and translation as Haji, a Persian punk persona based on the 19th century stereotypical picaresque British novel The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan by J.J. Morier. The translation backstory of this novel has real relevance to Sedarat’s Haji project. The first translator to bring this novel into Persian actually re-appropriated some of the Orientalist depictions. To this end, with Haji, Sedarat attempts to expose American assumptions of Iran and the Middle East. This promises to be a fun and memorable show not to be missed!

Reviews:

“Not since Ali Hakim, the Persian peddler in Oklahoma!has a minor Middle Eastern character lit up the grand stage.
—Roger Ailes, Former Fox News Chief

“Heh heh heh. Heck of a show!”—George W. Bush, Former American President

“O, O, O, that Rumi rag. It’s so erotic. So exotic!”—Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran

“With so much trouble in the region, it’s great to let go and laugh at it all.”—Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State

Join us on Wednesday, September 5, 2018, 7:00 PM at the William Carlos Williams Center, One Williams Plaza in Rutherford NJ.

Admission is free and there is an open mic with generous reading times.

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week—July 24

Poem of the Week 7/24/18

Della Rowland


Teterboro           

A plane bound for Teterboro airport may someday crash into my backyard,
onto my house, onto me and the cat,
onto the dense line of trees that forms the back property line
and the north-east corner where the picnic table and grill sit on the patio,
onto the side porch of the house, with steps
going down either side to both front and back yards,

which on that day will be in flames.

The white plastic fences, guaranteed for a lifetime, no painting required ever,
will melt,
curve concavely, coquettishly into my yard,
fold neatly into the burning fuselage,
which will blaze brightly,
as suddenly splendid as lighter fluid on charcoal
when a wooden strike-anywhere match
swiped across patio slate is thrown into the barbeque grill.

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RWB Workshop Poem of the Week—July 17

Poem of the Week   7/17/2018

Don Zirilli

A Message from Me and My Care Provider to All the Romeos

Dear broken jar of honey,
I’m writing from the savage sting
reflected in your cracking glass.

Dear desperate bugs

lighting up July,
my fireworks are all prescribed.

Dear love-starved wanderer,
I wrote the recipe for your tears.
I made them taste like ocean.

Dear empty room with slashing light,
I’ve got no space for cribs,
no paint for rainbows.

I’m a doctor of remaining.
My bedside manner
burned the beds.

Dear hands-on Casanova,
when you find out what it really means
to walk on air,

you’ll hold me as tightly as I hold you.