What’s your name (I made that crazy question up!)?
Well, my name is Eman... something... I think that I’m going to do the one name thing like the model... Just “Eman,” you know. It makes me seem more cool and mysterious....
Where do you live?
I’ve lived a lot of places, but right now, it’s NYC, baby. I’m always in the city, but I live in Queens and it’s cool.
When were you born?
Well, do you want my real age, or my age for now in this life? I was born April 23rd... Hmmm, I could give the year and I could keep it a secret, because it was about a million years ago in 1984.
Where were you born?
I was born in boring old Long Island, but I have family from all around. My Mother is Black and Native American and my Father was Palestinian. Exotic mix, huh?
How does a teenager come to be co-hosting two open mics?
I have no idea. I just walked into a coffee place one night and I had brought some poems and my guitar and the woman that runs the reading was blown away with my energy and with what I had to say. And so after about a month and a half of going to the open mics, she asked me if I wanted to co-host with her and I said hell ya, you know.
The first one is at 272 West 10th Street in the West Village at the Community Village School. It’s called “The Poetry Beat” and it’s in the music room, every Tuesday night from 7 to 10 pm. We are open to just about everything people want to do. Sometimes there’s a big crowd and other times it’s medium-sized.
The other reading used to be in Brooklyn, but as of two weeks ago, things changed and it’s going to be in Manhattan. (It had been in Cobble Hill at Shakespeare’s Sister.) The name of the reading is “Womyns Voices.” It was great and it’s going to be even greater at the new place. It’s on the first and third Sundays of every month from 3:30 to 6:30 pm. It’s more of a womyn’s reading, but we always let men come in and read their stuff. On the Tuesday readings it’s me, Frank Robinson and Viviana Grell. On Sundays, it’s just me and Viviana Grell.
My open mics are something else. We dance there. We go crazy there. We are open to any kind of nutty people... sometimes that’s great, sometimes not so great, cuz some crazies come in, but it’s all fun. We get to experiment with many different ideas and we have features from all over who earn and deserve their spots as the features. Our open mic is just fun.
Who are your favorite dead poets?
Hmmm... I have to think long and hard about this.. Just kidding.... I’d have to say number one would be Walt Whitman. Not only because of his words and because he was openly gay, but because he put pictures into your head when you heard his poems. Another would have to be Edgar Allan Poe because of his eerie sense of everything -- I love that about his work. It opens my mind to things that give you so much insight into the world of the scary and unusual, and it’s cool.
I know this might sound odd, but Martin Luther King is another one of my favorite poets. Now you must be thinking, “Sweetie, he was wonderful and everything, but he wasn’t a poet....” To me, he was. His words held such power. They could control a crowd and that’s what poets do. They come on stage and control the crowd with their words.
Who are your favorite living poets?
I’ll just go down the list of the greatest poets who perform around the city. Some of them I know personally and they are excellent people, and some of them I’ve just seen perform, but I know the majority of them personally. Here we go: Beau Sia, Ishle Park, Viviana Grell, Frank Robinson, [link url=http://www.suheirhammad.com/]Suheir Hammad, Mark Bonhomme, Vicky Johnson, Camillo Dimaria, Bob Hart... and this list goes on and on, but those are my top favorites. I’d put myself on the list, but ya know, that doesn’t look right....
And now, Time for a Poem!
