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If you haven’t come by Central Library yet to see the wonderful panel exhibit Poetic Voices of the Muslim World, please don’t wait until after it closes on November 30!

And if you have missed the great programs supplied so far by our own Islamic Speakers Bureau of Atlanta, please don’t miss any more! A dabke performance, children’s stories, the poetry of Rumi, Islamic painting and calligraphy, and Pianos for Peace are yet to come.

In addition to our locally-provided programs, four speakers funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities via Poet’s House and CityLore in New York City will be travelling to Atlanta for Tuesday programs at 5:30.

Tuesday, October 27 at 5:30: Worlds of the Ghazal: Dr Syed Akbar Hyder, will recite in Urdu this most beautiful form for love poems. His reading is followed by a music and dance rendition by internationally-acclaimed Kiran Ahluwalia and Rez Abbasi. Not to be missed!

Tuesday, November 3 at 5:30: The Traveling Word: A West African Epic: Jali musicians accompany a finah (traditional storyteller) from Sierra Leone as he leads us through his struggle to preserve an ancient oral epic written down by his finah father and lost in that country’s bloody civil war. Not to be missed!

Tuesday, November 10 at 5:30: Islam and the Blues: Could American blues have originated with the azan? Dr Sylviane Diouf of the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library demonstrates the connection. Not to be missed!

Tuesday, November 17 at 5:30: Poetry reading by Kazim Ali: What it means to be a Muslim in post-9/11 America along with expressive observations about Islam from one of the great Muslim poets writing in the United States today. Entertaining and forceful and not to be missed!

For more information, please find a description of the panels, a listing of the remaining programs, and a list of books purchased with the grant (which Atlanta-Fulton Public Library cardholders may borrow) at Poetic Voices of the Muslim World at Central.

For more information, please contact John Wright at 404-730-1896.

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