Tahir Hamut: The Distance 
A Bilingual Uyghur Poetry Reading & Discussion

Friday, March 2, 2018
12:30 - 2:00 PM
Thomson Hall 317
University of Washington

Please join us for a reading of recent poems in Uyghur and English, followed by a discussion of poetry and politics with Tahir Hamut and Darren Byler (UW Anthropology). Hamut, one of the most renowned contemporary Uyghur poets, first began writing poetry in the late 1980s when he was in Beijing studying with the Chinese language “misty” poets and reading Western modernist poetry and literature. During that time he was one of the ethnic minority leaders of the Tiananmen Square protests. He spent a number of years in prison as a result of his political and cultural work, but was still able to piece together a career as a filmmaker, literary critic and poet. His work has been published in China and in translation in Words Without Borders, Berkeley Poetry Review, Asymptote, Crazy Horse, Gulf Coast, and other literary journals.