DUBAI, 7 February 2022 – Award-winning spoken word poets Dr Afra Atiq and Carlos Andrés Gómez delivered a blistering, one-of-a-kind, multi-genre show in collaboration with Nashville-based singer-songwriter and producer Brent Shuttleworth at Expo 2020 Dubai’s Dubai Millennium Amphitheatre on Monday evening.
Kicking off with Storytelling (if you do nothing else), Dr Afra Atiq explored the power of poetry and the sense of identity before moving on to Risha (which means ‘Sail’ in English), an ode to those moments of feeling like an underdog. Encouraging the audience to snap their fingers, whistle and clap along, Atiq kept the audience engaged, as she played with different poetic forms, tempos and impressive tongue twisters.
Carlos Andrés Gómez took to the stage for the second half of the show, launching with Beating Traffic, while Brent Shuttleworth provided a dynamic accompanying soundtrack that added to the poem’s sense of urgency. Shuttleworth’s playful sounds provided an other-worldly dimension to Gomez’s follow-up Gifted, while the evocative soundtrack to C(h)ord, which deals with the past haunting the present, kept the audience enthralled.
For the finale, Atiq, Gómez and Shuttleworth collaborated on a multi-lingual performance that beautifully celebrated the power of the word and its ability to transcend divisions and boundaries, cultivating tolerance and inclusivity.
Dr Afra Atiq is an acclaimed Emirati spoken word poet. She has performed internationally including at events in India, Germany, and the UK. Atiq holds a PhD in Media and Creative Industries and is the co-founder of the Untitled Chapters.
Carlos Andrés Gómez is a Colombian-American award-winning poet and the star of HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, TV One’s Verses and Flow, and Spike Lee’s number one box office movie Inside Man with Denzel Washington.
The poetry evening formed part of the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature, one of the world’s leading international literary festivals.