The Jazz Roots Poetry Series aims to enhance the cultural landscape of Jazz Roots Bucharest, one of the city's rapidly growing cultural hubs dedicated to dance, music, performance, and the visual arts.
Contrary to common perceptions of poetry as elitist, the Jazz Roots Poetry Series firmly believes that poetry, like music and dance, possesses the power to subvert and revitalize communities. We have faith in the impact of poetic expression, beyond the boundaries of literary circles, critical commentaries, and academic cliques.
Poetry, music, and dance – these are exchanges of energies. They are acts of mediation and transformation. Regardless of whether they engage with explicit social agendas, they redefine the concept of occupying a space and the presences that inhabit it, whether this is a stage, a dance studio, or a room of one’s own.
We believe in contamination. Books, the journey of characters, and how words (borrowing from Eliot) ‘slip, slide, perish [...] will not stay in place, / will not stay still’ - such dynamics enter the economy of dancing, they direct the hand that moves the brush, and the way that hand steadies before taking a picture. Jazz Roots offers a space for a porous artistic experience.
Expanding this vision beyond the realm of the visual arts and dancing and into that of the spoken poetic word, the Jazz Roots Poetry Series is introducing in 2024 a series of poetry readings, discussions, and performances. We will be extending invitations to the most talented national and international authors and translators to participate in this community and its growing audience. In other words, we will provide poets with a genuine and unvarnished platform for self-expression, where they can perform with unrestricted freedom in terms of form, content, and approach. We invite poets to play a role in shaping a burgeoning cultural reality in front of a diverse audience and at the heart of a city in rapid cultural and social evolution. Like dancing, a poet’s dreams will be taken seriously.
