From Philly.com
by John Timpane
“I’m writing about identity,” says Husnaa Hashim, “about being multiple things at once – a woman, a Muslim, an African American. Authenticity is very important to me: I am all the things I am, all of the time. I’m here in front of you in a really, really raw form.”
If that sounds like a poet talking, it is. If it sounds like a mature, older woman talking, one who has lived a long time and knows herself, her art, and the world, yes, Hashim is that, too – only she’s 17.
Hashim is Philadelphia’s 2017-18 youth poet laureate. “I’m ecstatic,” she says. “I didn’t believe it for a while.” Selected from 21 applicants, she is to receive the award at a ceremony Thursday morning at the Central Library of the Free Library of Philadelphia. The position carries a $1,000 stipend for the year. Current adult Poet Laureate Yolanda Wisher said, “Her poetry is a wondrous mix of ferocity and vulnerability, in which an eloquence of language reflects an eloquence of the soul.”
