Saul Williams
By Odette Flemming

Saul Williams is an artist of the new Millennium. Although he has been blessing us with his incredible insight and verbal dexterity since the mid 90’s, many only know him as the sexy celibate boyfriend in the sitcom ‘Girlfriends”. Saul is one of those ‘hyphenated’ artists. He is a poet-rapper-actor-musician-singer, but most of all he is a beacon of light to those who feel that this generation has lost its creative way.

Born in upstate New York, Williams is a Morehouse man who went on to complete his Masters in Acting at New York University. However in the midst of all his studies he found himself in the heart of the finger-snapping, dimly lit, spoken word/ poets’ cafe circuit. All roads led to Fort Greene and Alphabet City where he stunned audiences with his linguistic prowess and amazing stage presence at the famed Brooklyn Moon Café and world renowned Nuyorican Poets Café. He went to win the Nuyorican’s Grand Slam Championship for 1996.

His film debut came as a lead in the movie Slam, a film which he co-wrote and starred in. It featured him as a young hustler who develops his love of poetic expression while incarcerated, then uses the universal truths that he discovers to release himself his ‘imprisoned mind-state’ upon his release. The film won the Grand Jury Price at the Sundance Film Festival in 1998 and the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival among others. Williams himself won critical acclaim for his performance in the lead role.

Where does an artist cultivate such a love of language? Well Saul finds it rooted in his love of hip hop. He holds a much larger vision for hip hop, one that features this art form as lyrically evolved and expansive not the narrowly confined music we experience today.

Williams’ written works include some of the most fluid and mystifying poems coming to light in these days of copycat, style-no-substance spoken word artists. His work has so much depth, texture, and enlightenment that his poetry has been added to the curriculum at universities and high schools around the country, including: New York University, American University, Morehouse College and The New School. He has been published in the New York Times, Details, Esquire, Essence, Rolling Stone and African Voices to name a few. His first book of poetry, The Seventh Octave, was published in 1997. S/he was published in 1999 and his most recent work, an epic poem titled ‘said the shotgun to the head, was published in 2003.

Saul Williams’ poetry is a sonic blast to your consciousness. For that very necessary rude awakening, we thank him.

she had eyes like two turntables
mix(h)er in between
my dreams and reality
blend in ancient themes
the bas(e) is of isis
cross-faded to ankh
the beat drops
like a cliff
overlooking my heart

© 2003- ‘said shotgun to the head – Saul Williams