Adisa AJA Andwele | World Poetry Reading Series

Ariadne’s note: The World Poetry Café Radio Show with hosts Ariadne Sawyer and Israel Mota were honored to welcome the Internationally known performance poet and musician AJA to the show. Also the show was dedicated to Komla Dumor BBC anchor from Ghana who passed away last week in our new In Loving Memory segment. E-poems from Oswald George Okaitei and Benjamin Oku were also featured as well as music from Rene Hugo Sanchez and Anthony Blackman, steel pan player and teacher. To listen CLICK HERE!

A Special Message to the World.

“As we start 2014, it is time that people understand that there is only one race on the Earth – the Human Race. Therefore, the artificial barriers and divisions that exist must be eliminated, for the World to live as One.

We are all going around together, and we must share a collective responsibility not only to protect the planet, but to make human existence one free of hunger, poverty, war and many of the other global issues.

Human consciousness needs to rise to this level of awareness for Human existence to attain a higher level. The fact that millions of children die from hunger and poverty every year does not paint a positive picture and negates human development, which seems to be measured solely by technological development. ” By AJA

AJA poet is a Barbadian-born World Music & Jazz poet and musician based in New York. AJA blends Jazz and R&B with various Caribbean rhythms – including Reggae and Calypso, to create a unique sound. This provides the platform for him to deliver his thought-provoking and engaging poetry. AJA has taken performance poetry to the international World Music, Jazz and Poetry Festivals stages; and his works have also been internationally published.

A feature of AJA is his intensity on stage. His work is captivating with heart-wrenching imagery that is engaging – “edutainment”. From his emergence as a poet, AJA has focused on global issues such as war, hunger and the abuse of women and children. But in 2003 he decided to do more and transformed his poems from the stage and the page into practical initiatives in Barbados, other Caribbean territories as well as in Sierra Leone, West Africa.

In 2003 he was made a UNDP Spokesperson on Peace and Poverty Eradication for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean. He is also a UN Women Caribbean Partner for Peace; and a member of the UN Secretary-General’s Network of Men Leaders – promoting and mobilising activities for the “UNiTE: End Violence against Women” Campaign.

Click here for a live performance:BIO eFlyer AJA

Here are two of his performance pieces:

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www.reverbnation.com/ajapoet Tel: 917-797-9173 Email: ajapoet@hotmail.com

Hyphenated

Inspired by Governor Bobby Jindal comments on race in America on the 50th Anniversary of the Speech by Martin Luther Jr.

I am a wedged between people

undermining the oneness of thought and being

I stop minds from seeing

To see only differences and comparisons

I am most distinct in my intent

More identifiable than apartheid

More universal than the snaking

Red Sea Walls of Separation

I project more snobbery from my appearance

That the opulence of the wealthy

Pushing up their noses

at the lifestyles coming from

inner Brooklyn ‘hip-hop’ cities

I may appear shortened

as though a line incomplete

and robbed from reaching my wholeness

But nevertheless,

I am imposed everywhere at will

inconveniently overused and inserted

indicating a link between

But a separate-ness

who am I?

I am hyphen

when I arrived in America

I immediately hyphen-native the Indians

Didn’t look back

while forwarding through time

To define all persons and patrons

Then I hyphenated the North from the South

Made America see itself

Only through hyphen after hyphen

I am made it citizens become hyphened-Americans

I hyphenated every race

Made people look at only face

Even hyphenated their space

displacing logical thinking

confusing the understanding of the social engineering

Or making it disappear

And in contrast I created

A Working hyphen class

A Middle hyphen class

An a Upper hyphen class

And as time further passed

I became that space

a hyphen between their ears

Imagine that, me just a small dash

A seemingly insignificant symbol

One that can’t multiply or add

subtract or divide

Could become such a symbol

Of the splintering of Americans

Into so many Social hyphen Class divisions.

August 26, 2013

Adisa ‘AJA’ Andwele, (c) 1094 East 58 Street, Brooklyn, NY 11234

On behalf of Hosts Ariadne Sawyer, Israel Mota and Techs Medhi and Gerry we want to wish you a blessed and wonderful New Year! Here are our shows and great features for January. Be sure to tune in on the internet live or download later! The World Poetry Café Radio Show, your favorite intercultural, multilingual show!

World Poetry Café Radio Shows for January, 2014
www.worldpoetry.ca, www.coopradio.org 100.5 FM.

Every Tuesday night, 9:10-10 pm Pacific Standard Time. Each feature will be also on www.worldpoetry.ca and linked to the radio show the following Wednesday.

January 7, Feature: Christopher M. Schultz is the author of the new book Poetic Perceptions. This work comes from the unconventional mind of Mr. Schultz, and takes the reader on a journey through the eternal and mystifying. USA.

January 14, Feature: Michael Kwaku Kesse Somuah, World Poetry Empowered Poet and award winner from Ghana who came to the World Poetry Canada International Festival at UBC, in April, 2013.

He is a multi award-winning poet and has participated in Poetry events, readings and performances in and out of Ghana, including Greece, Cyprus, South Africa, Canada, India, Holland etc. Michael has been voted as one of the top twenty “coolest” individuals of repute In Africa by Celebrity fashion magazine Glitz Africa, Issue 20 in 2013.

January 21, Feature: Changming Yuan, 7-time Pushcart nominee and author of Chansons of a Chinaman (2009) and Landscaping (2013), grew up in rural China and published several monographs on translation and the English language before moving to Canada as an international student. With a PhD in English form the U of Saskatchewan, Yuan currently tutors independently in Vancouver, where he co-publishes Poetry Pacific with his teenager poet son Allen Qing Yuan and operates PP Press. Also his poet son will be on air:

Allen Qing Yuan, a Pushcart nominee and author of Traffic Light (2013), currently attends UBC and co-publishes Poetry Pacific with his father-mentor Changming Yuan in Vancouver. Aged 18, Allen has had poetry appearing in more than 70 literary publications across 16 countries, including Cordite Poetry Review, Istanbul Literary Review, Literary Review of Canada, Mobius, Paris/Atlantic, Oklahoma Review, Poetry Kanto, Poetry Scotland, Shampoo, Spillway, Taj Mahal Review and Two Thirds North.

January 28th, Feature: Adisa AJA Andwele, a Barbadian-born, Brooklyn-based performance poet. AJA blends Jazz and R&B with various Caribbean rhythms – including Reggae and Calypso, to create a unique sound. This provides the platform for him to deliver his thought-provoking and engaging poetry. AJA has taken performance poetry to the international World Music, Jazz and Poetry Festivals stages; and his works have also been internationally published.
http://youtu.be/zImnSdzDpaM

World Poetry Reading Series

Bringing the world together in peace

Tag Archives: Adisa AJA Andwele

World Poetry Proudly Presents the Poet AJA from Barbados and Brooklyn, NY!

Happy New Year From The World Poetry Cafe Radio Show in Vancouver, BC Canada!

January 7, Feature: Christopher M. Schultz is the author of the new book Poetic Perceptions. This work comes from the unconventional mind of Mr. Schultz, and takes the reader on a journey through the eternal and mystifying. USA.

January 14, Feature: Michael Kwaku Kesse Somuah, World Poetry Empowered Poet and award winner from Ghana who came to the World Poetry Canada International Festival at UBC, in April, 2013.