My Name Is Hmoob: Call Me Freedom
2014
My name is not “Exotic . . .” My name is Freedom My people are worth more than eye candy and shallow praise, My people have no home, no country We are from stolen territory...
April 10, 2014 – Soul Sounds Open Mic featuring the Be Heard MN Youth Slam Team
2014
From January to March 2014, over one hundred young Minnesotans were deeply engaged in the Be Heard MN Youth Poetry Slam Series, a program of TruArtSpeaks. The slam identifies six young people to represent the State of Minnesota in the international Brave New Voices Youth Poetry Slam Festival. Tonight, Soul Sounds Open Mic will host a few of the team members and engage with them about their experience as youth poets throughout the process, while also listening to and experiencing their art.
This Week in Saint Paul: Monday, April 7–Sunday, April 13, 2014
2014
I woke up Friday morning to a white blanket of humility. I had watched it begin to fall the previous afternoon as I sat in on one of the many events listed in the Almanac arts calendar. We looked out the window of the third-floor room of the Metropolitan State library to see heavy flakes against the backdrop of our downtown skyline and both of the capital city’s domes. I know last week, I hinted that we might be past all of this. I was wrong, but at the same time here I was in a room full of people happy not to be stuck in front of the television at home.
What Saint Paul Owes to Whiskey
2014
During an 1883 visit to Saint Paul, the great Mark Twain observed: “How solemn and beautiful is the thought, that the earliest pioneer of civilization, the van-leader of civilization, is never the steamboat, never the railroad, never the newspaper, never the Sabbath-school, never the missionary—but always whiskey! Such is the case.”
April 3, 2014 – Soul Sounds Open Mic featuring Mark K. Tilsen with Writing Workshop
2014
Mark Kenneth Tilsen is a Jewish Oglala Lakota poet and philosopher born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He currently is studying at Hamline University and trying to find a way back home after graduation. A sometimes activist, he can be found scribbling in his notebook at Kopplin's coffee house when hiding from irate professors.
City Trees, Coffee Shop, Spring
2014
Some days trees are all I see. Today they’re getting fringed in leaves at the crown. Underneath there’s a huge ball of root that nobody sees except my son...