Cuban Omar Perez is a renowned poet, musician, artist and translator.

Though he speaks only passable Spanish, Hank Lazer found, on one of his four trips to Cuba, a spiritual-artistic brother in Omar Perez.

Lazer, recently retired from the University of Alabama, sought out the renowned poet, musician, artist and translator in part because of their shared study of Zen Buddhism, but also because both experiment with forms in their writing.

Like mine, his poetry changes all the time, from book to book. A restless poet, always kind of interrogating medium, not one to stick with a form, Lazer said. Hes now much more interested in what he refers to as improvisation, the intersection of theater, dance, music and poetry.

Those crossroads center in Tuscaloosa this week, as Perez comes to UA for a weeklong residency, highlighted by a poetry reading and musical performance at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Jemison-Van de Graaff Mansion, 1305 Greensboro Ave., in downtown Tuscaloosa. Its free and open to the public.

This trip to Alabama wouldnt be possible without my participation in Iowas IWP (International Writing Program, where hes in residence this semester), Perez wrote in an email correspondence.

On the other hand, Hank and Andrew Raffo Dewar (also a boundary-pushing musician, assistant director of UAs Creative Campus and assistant professor of interdisciplinary arts in New College and the School of Music) and Steve Miller (UA professor and coordinator of the master of fine arts book arts program) were visiting Havana relatively recently and we have had the chance to collaborate in my hometown.

Now its time to do it the other way around, and Im very pleased to do so.

The Tuesday event will emphasize what he calls ... the performative side of poetry.

The performance consists of a series of poems and songs accompanied by the cajn drum (a six-sided, boxlike percussion instrument) as well as a few poems to be read in English, which is how they were originally written, Perez wrote.

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Cuban poet Omar Perez to share his work Tuesday in Tuscaloosa