Safia Elhillo is an award-winning poet who performs regularly and whose writing has been published in various journals and anthologies, the New Daugthers of Africa anthology just being one of the latest one. In 2016, her chapbook Asmarani was included in the New Generation African Poets Box Set. Her debut collection The January Children, was published in 2017 and won the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets. In 2018, she was awarded a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. Her latest book is the anthology Halal If You Hear Me. The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 3 which she co-edited with Fatimah Asghar. 

In this episode, we will talk about Safia’s books, the power of silences in poetry, using different languages in one text, facilitating poetry workshops, the importance of communities and the possibilities of fashion.

Welcome to the Season 2 finale! We can't be more excited to bring you our interview with Safia Elhillo, a writer whose beautiful realness brilliantly bridges the imagination and reality. You will instantly feel Safia's power, and her voice expands our perspectives when we listen. Her words can simultaneously slap you, embrace you, destroy you, elate you. Enjoy, everyone!

Follow Safia on Instagram: [at]safiamafia

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The Cornerstore spoke with Safia Elhillo about her book ‘The January Children,’ her career as a traveling poet, and what’s next for her.

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The Cornerstore spoke with Safia Elhillo about her book ‘The January Children,’ her career as a traveling poet, and what’s next for her.

http://serve.castfire.com/audio/3583544/3583544_2019-01-08-013844.64kmono.mp3?ad_params=zones%3DPreroll%7Cstation_id%3D6851.mp3

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Connor and Jack explore the fantastic poem "First Quarantine With Abdelhalim Hafez" by Safia Elhillo. Connor fixates on the tensions between the figurative and literal and Jack goes deep on his and the poem's obsessions, and also pulls off a Werner Herzog impression.

Check out the poem below, or at this link: https://www.poetrysociety.org/psa/poetry/crossroads/own_words/African_poets_tatu/
Read more about Safia Elhillo here: http://safia-mafia.com/bio

Listen to the full Abdelhalim Hafez song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro_peC026lE

Read the referenced interview with Elhillo here: http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/unapologetic-black-muslim-sudanese-american-an-interview-with-safia-elhillo/

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You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

First Quarantine With Abdelhalim Hafez
by Safia Elhillo

& maybe it is too easy to blame
mortality on our capacity for love
the slow death that is putting
your breath in another's body
trusting your name in another mouth
but maybe it is smaller say water
sweat yes tears yes but also
the nile as a vein between our two home
countries washing the red dust
from my feet yes cooling the sear
of a blood-orange sun yes but also killing you
the way only foul water can kill

& i do know how it is
to be young & always
sick at the mercy of
something meant
to immortalize us

the slow finish is in my heart
its syrup trickle
& i don't mean love
i mean my wet crooked
actual heart

Safia Elhillo is a badass and poet of Sudanese origin who manages the space between her words with fearless grace. She's in town for Halal if You Hear Me, a special event for Louder Than A Bomb that shares its name with the anthology of which she is co-editor with AirGo alum Fati Asghar. If you have any questions about Ja Rule and Ashanti, she is your go-to person. Her first book, The January Children, is available now.

Recorded live 3/9/17 at WHPK 88.5FM in Chicago
Music from this week's show:
If (Instrumental) - @Oddiseemusic

Welcome to Episode 12 of The Poetry Gods! On this episode of The Poetry Gods, we talk to Safia Elhillo about her writing journey & much more. As always, you can reach us at emailthepoetrygods@gmail.com. We are looking to book shows for Fall 2016. Bring The Poetry gods to your campus!

SAFIA ELHILLO BIO:

Safia Elhillo’s first full-length collection, The January Children, is forthcoming from University of Nebraska Press in 2017.
Sudanese by way of Washington, DC, a Cave Canem fellow and poetry editor at Kinfolks Quarterly: a journal of black expression, she received an MFA in poetry at the New School. Safia is a Pushcart Prize nominee, co-winner of the 2015 Brunel University African Poetry Prize, and winner of the 2016 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets. In addition to appearing in several journals and anthologies including “The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop,” her work has been translated into Arabic and Greek.
Safia has performed at venues such as TEDxNewYork, the South African State Theatre, the New Amsterdam Theater on Broadway, and TV1’s Verses & Flow. She was a founding member of Slam NYU, the 2012 and 2013 national collegiate championship team, and was a three-time member and former coach of the DC Youth Slam Poetry team. She is currently a teaching artist with Split This Rock.

Follow Safia Elhillo on twitter: @mafiasafia on instagram: @safiamafia

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