Parang

Description

Parang is the second collection of poetry from former Australian Poetry Slam winner Omar Musa. Written over four years, the collection explores Malaysian jungles, dark Australian streets, and dreams. Dealing with the issues of loss, migration and belonging, Parang is an incisive and sometimes raw look at the here and now of a changing world. 'Parang is as brutal as it is delicate, poems romp between the urban landscape and foreign humidities ...I love these poems, they are a clarion call to the listless, to take up the parang, or the pen, the instrument or the book and make something happen. A balm for the conflicted, Musa is a rhapsodist like no other.' Tara June Winch, author of Swallow the Air 'Never mind page versus stage, this is poetry- listen.' Jeet Thayil, author of Narcopolis

Omar Musa is a Malaysian-Australian rapper and poet from Queanbeyan. A former winner of the Australian Poetry Slam and Indian Ocean Poetry Slam, he has performed extensively around the country, and has been a featured guest internationally at the likes of the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, Singapore Writers Festival, Jaipur Literary Festival, Galle Literary Festival (Sri Lanka), the France Slam League Cup, Beijing Writers Festival, and the Crossing Border Music and Writers Festival (Netherlands). His international hip-hop tours have included supporting legendary poet/singer Gil Scott-Heron in Germany. Omar has released three hip hop albums and two poetry books, including Parang, 2013. He was a panellist on ABC's Q&A in 2012, performing a poem for its conclusion, and was a star performer at the TEDx Sydney event in 2013 at the Sydney Opera House. Omar has also run creative workshops in remote Aboriginal communities, youth centres and rural schools. His critically acclaimed debut novel Here Come the Dogs was long listed for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and he was named one of the Sydney Morning Herald's Young Novelists of the Year in 2015.

'I savored this. Omar Musa is a special writer with his own beat, cutting through worlds.' - Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist. 'Parang is as brutal as it is delicate, poems romp between the urban landscape and foreign humidities ...I love these poems, they are a clarion call to the listless, to take up the parang, or the pen, the instrument or the book and make something happen. A balm for the conflicted, Musa is a rhapsodist like no other.' - Tara June Winch, author of Swallow the Air. 'Never mind page versus stage, this is poetry: listen.' - Jeet Thayil, author of Narcopolis