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IN RECENT YEARS, a new generation of young Swedish poets has rediscovered the artistic values promoted during the twentiedi century by die avant-garde movement in western Europe and revisited by die Beat poets in die United States. Performance poetry, spoken word manifestations, estradpoesi or poetry slams are becoming signature forms of lyrical expression for an increasing number of writers. Sweden's largest poetry event is the Stockholm Poetry Festival with its increasingly more popular poetry slam section that went from twelve participants in 1996 to seventy eight competitors ten years later. Everyday life in urban centers is punctuated by poetry readings and live performances hosted at coffee shops, theaters, and music clubs.
Most slam poets in contemporary Sweden identify a double source of inspiration for their works, namely hip-hop and performance poetry. The influence of performance poetry writing is observed especially in ú\e stylistic organization of dieir works, oftentimes accompanied by music. The presence of hip-hop is felt in bodi die structural organization of the texts and, perhaps most importantly, die poets' thematic choices. This discussion centers on a few writers, Johannes Anyuru, Daniel Boyacioglu, and Navid Modiri, who concern themselves with issues of identity, ethnicity, and social marginality in contemporary Sweden. Their performances credit The Latin Kings and dieir musical production, for having a well-defined social cause and a unique poetic conscience deeply anchored in the everyday realities of non-heritage Swedish youth living at the outskirts of large urban areas. The three poets' works reflect the social realities of contemporary Sweden and speak of ethnic discrimination, social isolation, and racism as elements pertaining to a type of mentality based on the dichotomy oss/de [us/ them]. Otherness becomes a ubiquitous Leitmotif in their poems and the main defining reality of dieir identity as non-heritage Swedes while attempting to integrate the reality of an imagined homeland located somewhere in the Middle East, Iran, Turkey, or South America.
Ethnic otherness is defined time and time again in a literary context as a reflection of the ideological changes at work in Swedish society since the mid-1990s. The present discussion traces the trajectory of transformation in die understanding ?? otherness as represented in poetic and musical form. The Latin Kings rap about a kind of ethnic otherness that is identical...