Jazz Poetry 2025: House of Waters ft. Priya Darshini, Safia Elhillo, Haleh Liza Gafori, Rania Mamoun, Nathan Osorio

For this dazzling Jazz Poetry performance, City of Asylum welcomes a celebrated group of poets and a Grammy-nominated band. Each Jazz Poetry program begins with a full set from a live jazz band, followed by a collaboration with local and international poets. In these collaborations, poets share their work alongside the musicians, the two art forms melding to create that signature Jazz Poetry improvisational style that offers something exciting, new, and unique with each individual performance. 

City of Asylum is thrilled to host musical group House of Waters, featuring Priya Darshini. Nominated for Best Contemporary Instrumental album in 2024 and described as “one of the most unique groups you will ever come across” (The Bubble), House of Waters incorporates elements of West African, psychedelic, indie rock, and classical and world musics in their style to be at the forefront of jazz innovation. Sharing the stage with the group are Safia Elhillo, the Sudanese author of The January Children (Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, Arab American Book Award); Haleh Liza Gafori, Persian poet and musician whose acclaimed translations of Rumi (Gold and Water) have given new audiences insight into the mind of the 13th-century poet; Rania Mamoun, Sudanese activist and poet (and City of Asylum Writer-in-Residence) who beautifully captured the early days of the pandemic in her collection Something Evergreen Called Life; and Nathan Osorio, poet and scholar whose debut poetry collection, Querida, was selected by Shara McCallum as the winner of the 2024 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize.

Featured Musicians:

Max ZT: hammered dulcimer

Moto Fukushima: 6-string electric bass

Franco Pinna: drums

Priya Darshini: vocals 

About the Band:

House of Waters is a trio that makes those words come alive as they incorporate elements of West African, jazz, psychedelic, indie rock, classical, and world music into their astonishingly unique sound. The “Jimi Hendrix of the Hammered Dulcimer” (NPR), Max ZT is an innovator of an instrument rarely heard in contemporary music. With roots in Irish folk music, Max has studied in Senegal, where he trained with the Cissoko Griot family, and India, where he studied under the santoor master Pandit Shivkumar Sharma. His unorthodox playing style has been a pioneering force in revolutionizing dulcimer techniques. Moto Fukushima is a recognized master of the six-string bass. With a background in jazz improvisation, Western classical music, and the music of South America, Moto’s playing combines finesse, subtlety, and power that leaves audiences “slack-jawed in awe” (Jazzwise). 

About the Poets:

Safia Elhillo, Sudanese by way of Washington, DC, is the author of the books The January Children, Girls That Never Die, Home Is Not A Country, and Bright Red Fruit. Safia’s work appears in Poetry Magazine, Callaloo, and The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-day series, among others, and in anthologies, including The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop and The Penguin Book of Migration Literature. With Fatimah Asghar, she is co-editor of the anthology Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket Books, 2019), which was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in 2020. Her fellowships include a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, Cave Canem, and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University. Safia received the 2015 Brunel International African Poetry Prize and was listed in Forbes Africa’s 2018 “30 Under 30.” Her work has been translated into several languages and commissioned by Under Armour, Cuyana, and the Bavarian State Ballet.

Haleh Liza Gafori is an American poet, translator, and musician of Persian descent. As a vocalist, she has performed as part of David Byrne’s One Note Series at Carnegie Hall and at Bonnaroo. The translator of Rumi’s Gold, she teaches workshops on Rumi’s poetry at universities and festivals across the country. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Rania Mamoun is a Sudanese activist and bestselling writer of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. She completed Something Evergreen Called Life, a poetry manuscript written during the COVID-19 quarantine, translated into English by Yasmine Seale and published by Action Books in March 2023. Rania has published two novels to great international acclaim, Green Flash and Son of the Sun, and Thirteen Months of Sunrise, a short story collection that was shortlisted for the 2020 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. Rania continues to organize for democracy in Sudan. Her writing has appeared in English, Korean, French, and Spanish translation. She has been a Writer-in-Residence at City of Asylum since 2019.

Nathan Xavier Osorio’s debut collection of poetry, Querida, was selected by Shara McCallum as the winner of the 2024 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize and published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. He is the author of The Last Town Before the Mojave, selected by Oliver De la Paz as a recipient of the Poetry Society of America’s 2021 Chapbook Fellowship. He received his PhD in Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz and was a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Irvine. His work has also appeared in BOMB, Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, Boston Review, Public Books, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art. His writing and teaching have been supported by fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, The Kenyon Review, and the Poetry Foundation. He is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Texas Tech University.

About Your Visit: 

The in-house restaurant, Cucina Alfabeto, is open for dinner from 5–10 pm. Please visit Open Table or call 412-435-1111 to make a reservation.