Omar Must – Millefiori Book Launch

Poetry is one of the oldest art forms in the world and can just about be used to express any creative idea. Omar Musa is one of Australia’s most talented wordsmiths. He is the winner of the 2008 Australian Poetry Slam, often releases his own hip hop albums and has collaborated with many artists including Horrorshow and L-Fresh the Lion to name a few. Musa has also written a fiction novel titled Here Come The Dogs and is about to release his third book of poems titled Millefiori.

Millefiori is an Italian word meaning a thousand flowers and a kind of decorative glass in which a number of glass rods are attached together then broken into sections which form flower patterns and is typically used to make paperweights. The title poem in the book has a double meaning: flowers as a goodbye symbol and glass paperweights holding your life down. In an interview Omar told City Hub, “It’s a book of goodbyes to remember childhood, a goodbye to lost relationships and a goodbye to an ageing generation of people my age so there is sadness in it but there’s hopefully beauty in it as well.”

Millefiori uses different stylistic formats to grapple with pain and to embrace beauty by combining free verse love poems and fierce political raps. On what role a poet has to play in the political landscape Omar said, “Poetry in many ways is still quite a fringe art form but I think poetry can distil the truth in a way that very few forms of writing can and that has to be a magical thing, poets on the fringes are witnesses to the world so we can distil the truth and relieve our sorrows by telling the truth.”

April 20, 6:30–9pm. Goodspace, 115 Regent St,Chippendale. FREE. Info: www.facebook.com

By Daniel Jaramillo.