“After I appeared on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam more than 10 years ago, I began to be invited to different parts of the world to recite my poems. One month I’d be reciting in an ambassador’s palace in Sweden and the next month I’d be reciting poetry on a dirt road in a village in West Africa and the next month reciting for inmates in a prison in Oakland, California. The most fascinating part of these journeys went beyond the poetry I shared and became more about what was being shared with me.

“When I’d hear a California inmate who was doing 30 years in federal prison compose lines of poetry that almost verbatim matched the poetry of a Persian Sufi poet in Iran who died a thousand years ago, I began to desire for these different poets to know of each other. Also it made me look at my own tradition, hip hop lyricism, as a bearer of my people’s love and fear; triumphs and tragedies. I developed a fellowship at Harvard University entitled “Between Rakim & Rumi” to further explore these parallels.

“As I began to form the idea of the show, Cornerstore Folklore, I found myself using a word that later I felt ashamed for using. When talking about the Iranians, for example, and their deep, wide ocean of Farsi love poetry, I would say how we need to do this show to humanize them in the eyes of the world. Humanize? They are already human. How do you humanize a human? Humanizing can only be necessary (or even possible) if people have been dehumanized. If media has the power to take humanity from people then through media we can restore humanity. If we can, then we must.”

Amir Sulaiman is a poet, screenwriter and producer born in Rochester, New York. His poems cross subjects of love, tragedy as well as what it means to reconcile humanity with the unprecedented trials of modernity. He has performed his works across the US as well as many other countries including England, Belgium, Senegal, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Australia, Iran and the Netherlands, and continues to tour world-wide. His recently published book of poetry, Love, Gnosis & Other Suicide Attempts met with critical acclaim, in addition to his latest album “The Opening,” the third in a unique trilogy project, following “The Meccan Openings” (2011) and “The Medinan Openings” (2012). Amir was first introduced to a National audience in 2004 when he was featured for two seasons on the groundbreaking series Def Poetry Jam on HBO.