The Other Paper wrote
Inner City Oasis
BY RICHARD ADES / MARCH 27, 2008
“You guys picked a bad night to come down here,” poet Joe Kashta told a couple of visitors as the snow continued to fall outside the New Harvest Café.
Then, slowly, the other poets began to arrive. By 9:30 p.m. or so, dreadlocked emcee Haatim Gyame was ready to begin the café’s weekly open-mike session with a ritual that involved pouring “libations” into a potted plant in honor of the “creator”—”by whatever name you choose to call the creator”—as well as ancestors and a host of civil-rights leaders.
Finally, Gyame opened the floor to the poets. Reading from scrawled notes or reciting from memory, they shared their original works on subjects ranging from love, life decisions and the afterlife to mothers who turn their children’s disabilities into SSI benefits.
It was the kind of literary exchange outsiders wouldn’t expect to find in the crime-ridden Linden area, but it was exactly the kind of event Kwojo Ababio envisioned when he opened New Harvest some five or six years ago.
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