Momtaza Mehri

I discuss the participation of young Somali women in K-pop culture, and how it reveals the interconnectedness of digital subcultures from the mid-2000s to now, on the basis of iconic K-pop videos. This essay was part of For the Record: K-pop Fandoms and Digital Diasporas, held on 9 May, 2019 in Het Nieuwe Instituut.

POETRY (April, 2019).

On M.I.A.’s legacy as an infuriatingly internationalist icon, political blackness and the artistic practice of surviving refugehood.

My Best Of 2018 pick for Artforum (Wendy Trevino's Cruel Fiction).

The World Cup in Bleus.

On Arab pop, Saudi princes, soft power and the scam that is pan-Arab media.

On the time-travelling poetics of Vince Staples, Moor Mother, South African art and who we leave behind to get ahead.

On resilience, noise and the networked feminisms of #MeToo + beyond.

Perhaps we need to face the terrifying and overwhelming possibility that there are no models, that we shall have to create from scratch.
— Toni Cade Bambara, On The Issue of Roles (1969)

First column as Columnist-in-Residence for San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's Open Space. On Pasolini, Kanye, Azealia Banks and our own degrees of separation from artists vs their art.

Featured in Four Hubs '10 Poets Bound to Shift UK Poetry'.

Poem won 3rd prize for the 2017 National Poetry Competition, judged by Hannah Lowe, Andrew McMillan and Pascale Petit,

“Those days madrassa meant a room above the café. No chairs. Laughter and conspiracy. Sizzled fat to perfume the conversation of men too long in the tooth for niceties. They had no indoor voices. We would impersonate the shoulder pop of the Indian Ocean.”

“What does it mean to pursue futures that leave the rest of us behind?''
On Black Panther's dazzling and equally frustrating power.

An Essay on Real Poetry™ & its contradictions.