Virtual stage for Dis Poem Wordz & Agro Festival
Published:Monday | November 16, 2020 | 12:11 AMShereita Grizzle/Staff Reporter
Ten years ago, when spoken-word artiste, Ras Takura, started the Dis Poem Wordz & Agro Festival, his goal was to put poetry on the front burner and fuse it with agriculture in a unique way that would garner international attention. Today, the event has grown significantly, and with this year’s staging slated to go virtual, Ras Takura is expecting even more growth as the online platform presents the opportunity for the festival to reach even more people.
“Getting more people to pay attention to the festival has never been a concern of ours but it has become necessary to reach an even more global audience than we have in the past. Even though we went across few states in the USA, Ghana and West Africa to promote the event extensively, we want to get to more people,” he said. “Poetry does have its place in the world of edutainment and the attention it has been receiving has been growing, but in order to make poetry events a more forceful experience to connect with, it’s necessary to reach a wider audience, and so this year for our 10th anniversary, we just want to build on what we have been doing at DisPoem Wordz and AgroFest for the past nine years. I know that we can do so much more for continuous growth in this part of the creative industry.”
The festival had to be pushed back due to COVID-19 but Ras Takura says organisers were not disappointed. In fact, with the goal of reaching more persons at the forefront of their minds, Ras Takura said he and his team saw the situation created by the COVID-19 pandemic as a blessing in disguise. “COVID-19 gave us an opportunity to present poetry on an even larger scale. We will be streaming live on the Facebook/DisPoem Wordz & Festival, the Malcolm X Sol Food and Music Festival Facebook page as well as the Music Festival and YouTube pages, and by going online, we will have the world watching and that’s a great thing because we will be presenting performance from different countries to feast in our Global celebration of Word Sound and Power.”
“COVID-19 has allowed us to partner with our sister festival that started two years ago in Omaha, Nebraska, at the Malcolm X foundation, in its third staging of The Malcolm X Sol Food and Music Festival , so we are now presenting performance from different countries to feast in our Global celebration of Word Sound and Power,” he continued. “The calibre of poets and presenters we are having this year will definitely draw the attention of the people. We will be having poets from the USA, Caribbean and Africa who are well established in their circles. One of our Caribbean poets, Dr Natalio Weatly, who is also the minister of education and agriculture in the British Virgin Islands, is slated to present. Blaq Ice, who is an influential international poet from Chicago and who has won multiple awards and wrote a couple books is also on, plus the original Mutabaruka, DYCR and Steppa. We will also have Sabreen Jolly, an international poet who I met in Atlanta and she is a super amazing presenter, as well as Blakk Rasta, who is the voice of Ghana. In regard to the Agro part of the festival, we will be having Dr Paul Ivey, who will be speaking about heirloom seeds exchange and the desire to preserve natural agriculture.”
In an interview with The Gleaner, Blakk Rasta said he is excited to be a part of the festival this year. “I am so honoured to be a part of this festival because when it comes to Jamaica and its arts, it is a whole different kind of ball game, and so I am very excited to be invited to be among such great poets from Jamaica, poets that I have listened to and admired for a long time now, and I am talking about the likes of Mutabaruka, DYCR and Ras Takura himself,” he said. “This, I think, will be the first time that an African poet will be coming on and I cannot disappoint Africa and so I am going to be coming with the African energy, the African spirit. Yes, it’s going to be virtual but I expect that those who will be watching will be able to say ‘wow, this was a show’. Poetry is such a wonderful thing and so I am going to add some music to the poetry and deliver a set that will keep people talking for a long while.”
DisPoem Wordz & Agro Festival is slated for November 22 at 5 p.m. Jamaica time.