| Remi Kanazi | |
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Kanazi's performances mix passionate poetry and humor |
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| Born | 1981 |
| Language | English |
| Ethnicity | Palestinian-American |
| Genres | Performance poetry, spoken word, hip hop |
| Subjects | Human rights, Palestine, Iraq |
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Influences
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poeticinjustice.net |
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Remi Kanazi (born 1981) is a Palestinian-American performance poet and human rights activist based in New York City.[1][2][3][4] He has edited a volume of hip hop, poetry and art, Poets for Palestine (2008), and published the first collection of his own poetry, Poetic Injustice: Writings on Resistance and Palestine, in 2011. He tours widely.[5]
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Kanazi is the son of Palestinian refugees who fled Palestine when the state of Israel was established in 1948.[1] Kanazi's maternal grandmother came from Jaffa and was highly pregnant with his mother when she was forced to leave; his father, a physician, left Haifa as a child when his family fled.[1]
Kanazi was born in Massachusetts in 1981, growing up as "the brownest thing going in a small western Massachusetts white Catholic town".[5][6] As a child, he rejected his ethnic heritage and tried to blend in with his environment: "I wanted McDonald’s, I wanted Coke, I was the fat kid who didn’t care [...]."[6] However, his grandmother's frequent wistful memories of Jaffa nurtured a love for Palestine in him that reasserted itself later on, when he connected with other Arab Americans in college.[1][6]
Kanazi moved to New York City in mid-2001 and began writing, especially so after 9/11, wishing to counter growing misconceptions about Arabs.[5][6] He read voraciously, trying to form his own opinion on the situation in the Middle East, and began performing his poetry.[5] Moving from his conservative upbringing to progressive politics, he was inspired by seeing Def Poetry Jam on Broadway in 2004, and by artists like Suheir Hammad and Carlos Andres Gomez: "It blew my mind how spoken word was so progressive and interlinked with socially conscious hip hop; it moved me in a way I wanted to emulate."[1][5][6][7]
A self-described "angry poet", Kanazi writes and performs political poetry addressing topics such as human rights, Palestine, Iraq and identity, criticizing American double standards of justice with respect to Iraq and Palestine: "I write a lot of angry pieces. All you gotta do is turn on CNN to write a poem. Thanks to our government and media, I’m never devoid of creativity."[6][8] He says his opposition to the war in Iraq is not motivated by anti-Americanism, but by his being a humanist, speaking out as a human being against injustices perpetrated in the service of money and power.[8] "I’m not a nationalist, I’m not an ethnocentrist. This isn’t about me being a Palestinian or me being an Arab. It’s about a system of oppression and what’s being done to a people. So whether you’re talking about police brutality or the US-Mexico border or Afghanistan or the war in Iraq or the plight of Palestinians, what they’re going through and the injustice that’s being perpetrated against them is what matters. And that’s what we’re working against – systems of oppression [...]."[7] His live performances feature passionate poetry performances interspersed with humorous commentary.[7][8]
Kanazi is the editor of Poets for Palestine (Al Jisser Group, August 2008), a collection of hip hop, poetry and art featuring Palestinian poets such as Suheir Hammad, Nathalie Handal, Fady Joudah, Annemarie Jacir, Mahmoud Darwish, Naomi Shihab and Kanazi himself, as well as African American poets Patricia Smith and Amiri Baraka.[1][5] Proceeds from the book go to a fund for U.S. cultural events featuring Arab artists.[5] In 2011, Kanazi published Poetic Injustice: Writings on Resistance and Palestine, a volume of poetry including a CD; he has also been a writer in residence and an advisory board member for the Palestine Writing Workshop, teaching spoken word poetry to youngsters in Palestine.[1][9] He has appeared on Al Jazeera English and BBC Radio and has toured North America, the UK, and the Middle East, with appearances at the Palestine Festival of Literature and at Poetry International.[9] He runs the PoeticInjustice.net website.[4]
Alexander Billet, writing for Electronic Intifada, likened Kanazi's Poetic Injustice to the work of Gil Scott-Heron in its exploration of identity, oppression and resistance.[7] The Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges has commented positively about Kanazi's poetry, saying, "There is more truth, and perhaps finally more news, in Remi Kanazi's poems than the pages of your daily newspaper."[9] His poetry was similarly praised by the South-African former minister Ronnie Kasrils, who considered it "a shining example of tomorrow's Palestine."[9] Novelist and Booker Prize winner John Berger has described Kanazi as "a voice which refuses to be silenced".[9]