PoemTalk features lively discussions of poetry in the PennSound archive. In this special taping of PoemTalk in front of an audience, PoemTalk host and producer Al Filreis will lead a discussion with Aldon Nielsen, William J. Harris, and Tyrone Williams about poems in Neilsen’s book Tray.
Students, faculty, and staff are all welcome to come and learn about "Imposter Syndrome" and how it may be impacting your life and those around you. Combat negative thoughts with the help of trained workshop experts from Wellness!
A.L. NIELSEN, the first recipient of the Larry Neal Award for poetry, is the author of the recent volumes Back Pages: Selected Poems, Sufferhead, Tray and Spider Cone. With Grammy-nominated Ethelbert Miller, he published the hybrid memoir/interview book MemeWars. Two of his spoken word collections are streaming on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify and others: Sometimes I Wonder Can a Cigar Box Hold My Blues and More Blues, Rage and Hollers. Nielsen has taught at Howard University, San Jose State, UCLA, Loyola Marymount, Penn State and Central China Normal University. His most recent work of criticism is The Inside Songs of Amiri Baraka.
WILLIAM J. HARRIS is an emeritus professor of American Literature, African American Literature, creative writing and Jazz Studies. He has taught at the University of Kansas, Penn State University and Cornell, and other institutions. He lives and writes in Brooklyn, New York. Among his books are The Poetry and Poetics of Amiri Baraka (criticism), Hey Fella Would You Mind Holding This Piano a Moment (poetry), In My Dark Way (poetry) and Crooners (poetry). He is the editor of The LeRoi Jones / Amiri Baraka Reader. His work has appeared in numerous journals, including The African American Review, Callaloo, Art Forum and The Boston Review. This month (February) Poetry Magazine is featuring a special 44 page folio devoted to Harris’s work and in March the critic Adam Bradley will discuss Harris in an article about Black Poetry in T: The New York Times Style Magazine.
TYRONE WILLIAMS is the David Gray Chair of Poetry & Letters at SUNY Buffalo. He is the author of several chapbooks and seven books of poetry: c.c. (Krupskaya 2002), On Spec (Omnidawn 2008), The Hero Project of the Century (The Backwaters Press 2009), Adventures of Pi (Dos Madres Press 2011), Howell (Atelos Books 2011), As Iz (Omnidawn 2018), washpark (with Pat Clifford)(Delete Press, 2021)and stilettos in a rifle range (Wayne State University Press, 2022). A limited-edition art project, Trump l’oeil, was published by Hostile Books in 2017. He and Jeanne Heuving edited an anthology of critical essays, Inciting Poetics (University of New Mexico Press, 2019). His website is at https://www.flummoxedpoet.com/
A book launch for Elden Poem and the The Institute for Other Intelligences
In this joint book launch, Daniel Snelson and Mashinka Firunts Hakopian present readings and performances from Elden Poem (Hysterically Real, 2022) and The Institute for Other Intelligences (X Artists’ Books, 2022). In The Institute for Other Intelligences, Hakopian presents the transcript of a fictive symposium on critical AI, convened at a not-yet-extant school for machine intelligences, artificial killjoys, and sundry bots. Across both works, the authors develop a poetics for inscribing speculative missives within the media platforms and network cultures of the present.
Hosted by Al Filreis, the event will feature live gameplay, an illustrated lecture-performance, video excerpts, and a poetry reading, with a Q&A on games, AI, and poetics to follow.
MASHINKA FIRUNTS HAKOPIAN is an Armenian writer, artist, and researcher born in Yerevan and residing in Glendale, CA. She is an Associate Professor in Technology and Social Justice at ArtCenter College of Design. In 2021, she was a visiting Mellon Professor of the Practice at Occidental College, where she co-curated the exhibition “Encoding Futures: Critical Imaginaries of AI” with Meldia Yesayan. With Avi Alpert and Danny Snelson, she makes up one-third of the collective, Research Service. She is a Contributing Editor for Art Papers, and her writing and commentary have appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books, Performance Research Journal, Art in America, Hyperallergic, and Meghan Markle's Archetypes. Performances and projects have been presented at the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Museum of Contemporary Art (LA), Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), Drawing Center (NY), Judson Memorial Church (NY), and in the New Museum (NY) Voice Registers Series. See also: www.mashinkafirunts.com
DANIEL SCOTT SNELSON is a writer, editor, and archivist working as an Assistant Professor in the Departments of English and Design Media Arts at UCLA. His online editorial work can be found on PennSound, Eclipse, UbuWeb, Jacket2, and the EPC. His books include Full Bleed: A Mourning Letter for the Printed Page (Sync, 2019), Apocalypse Reliquary: 1984-2000 (Monoskop, 2018), Radios (Make Now, 2016), EXE TXT (Gauss PDF, 2015), Epic Lyric Poem (Troll Thread, 2014), and Inventory Arousal with James Hoff (Bedford Press/Architectural Association, 2011). With Mashinka Firunts Hakopian and Avi Alpert, he performs as one-third of the academic performance group Research Service. See also: dss-edit.com
A live reading by Jesús I. Valles and Ricardo Bracho
Note: masks are required for this event
In this live reading and conversation, playwrights Jesús I. Valles (they/them) and Ricardo A. Bracho will engage the U.S./Mexico borderlands and bathhouses as insurgent geographies of queer Latinx life. Putting excerpts from two of Jesús’s plays in conversation with one another, the playwrights consider their personal experiences as queer artist-scholars whose work reflects on colonial hauntings, familial memories, and erotic desires. Their reading and conversation will be followed by a Q&A with the audience. Lunch will be provided at the conclusion of the conversation.
JESÚS I. VALLES (THEY/THEM) is a queer Mexican immigrant, educator, storyteller, and performer from Cd. Juarez/El Paso. Jesús is a 2021 CantoMundo fellowship recipient at the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, a 2019 Lambda Literary fellow, a 2019 Walter E. Dakin Playwriting Fellow of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, a recipient of the 2019 Letras Latinas Scholarship from the Community of Writers’ Poetry Workshop, and a poetry fellow at Idyllwild Arts Writers Week. Jesús is also a 2018 Undocupoets Fellow, a 2018 Tin House Scholar, a fellow of The 2018 Poetry Incubator, and the runner-up in the 2017 Button Poetry Chapbook Contest. Their work has been published in The Shade Journal, The Texas Review, The New Republic, Palabritas, The Acentos Review, Quarterly West, The Mississippi Review, Palette, The Adroit Journal, BOAAT, The McNeese Review, and PANK. Their poetry has also been featured on NPR’s Code Switch, The Slowdown, The BreakBeat Poets’ LatiNext Anthology, and the Best New Poets 2020 anthology. As an actor, they are the recipient of four B. Iden Payne Awards, including Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama (2018), and Outstanding Original Script (2018) and they were nominated for the Mark David Cohen New Play Award for their play, (Un)Documents. They most recently starred as Penny Marshall in Victor I. Cazares’ Pinching Pennies with Penny Marshall: Death Rituals for Penny Marshall for New York Theatre Workshop. Jesús was OUTSider festival’s first OUTsider-in-residence and is currently an MFA playwriting student at Brown University. Their plays include (Un)documents, bala.fruta, a river, its mouths, and bathhouse.pptx.
RICARDO A. BRACHO is a writer, editor and teacher who has worked in community and university, theater and video/film, politics and aesthetics for the past twenty-nine years. His other academic appointments include Visiting Multicultural Faculty at The Theatre School at DePaul University in Chicago and Artist-Scholar in Residence at the Center for Chicano Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. His award-winning plays, which include The Sweetest Hangover, Sissy, Puto and Mexican Psychotic have been produced in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco, as well as workshopped and staged nationwide. His focus in community has been on social justice, public health, and the arts with queer and trans youth of color, Latina/o/x high risk populations, queer men of color, and incarcerated men. He has been a participant in the National Endowment for the Arts/Theatre Communications Group residency program as well as with Mabou Mines. He is currently compiling his selected plays for publication as well as completing a manuscript of poems, The Salt of Him.
PWC and PAGE welcome Passional Boutique to Penn’s Campus for an interactive Kink Exploration Workshop. As part of Passional Boutique’s education program, the Kink & BDSM for Beginners class is described as “An interactive class on kink and BDSM! Whether you are just beginning to dabble or ready to live the lifestyle 24/7, this workshop is for you. Topics will include: language & kink vocabulary, consent & negotiation, impact play, bondage & restraint, sensation play, and more! **There will be a live demo for visual learners** This class is open to all genders, sexualities, and experience levels.” In line with Penn Gen Eq 2023’s theme, “Stay Safe,” the class is open to all members of the Penn community ages 18+ and will explore different aspects of safe, consensual, and mutually healthy relationships.
The Critical Armenian Studies Collective is pleased to announce "Infidelities: Armenian Studies Otherwise" (March 24 – 26, 2023), a three-day international conference about new directions in the study of Armenian memory, culture, and displacement across West Asia and the Middle East to the Americas and back. In collaboration with scholars and programs at Penn, the University of Michigan, and the Free University of Berlin, “Infidelities” brings together scholars, curators, filmmakers, visual artists, physical theatre performers, and a sound performer, all of whom work either directly in, or tangentially to, Armenian Studies, to flesh out new visions for the field, for the understanding of “Armenianness,” and for categories of identity at large. Through a series of panels, performances, film screenings, and working groups focused around the polyvalent provocation of "infidelity," the conference will focus on a spectrum of lively new directions toward which Armenian Studies is currently moving: feminist and queer interventions; cultural studies of hybrid and syncretic identities; aesthetic imaginings of Armenité beyond text and language; new materialisms and revolutionary change in a postsocialist setting; utopian futures beyond the nation-state; necropolitics, post-memory, and alternative imaginaries of the archive; as well as postcolonial critiques and visions of "reconciliation." The event will be hosted at Slought (4017 Walnut St.), with afternoon panels and film screenings at the LGBT Center (3907 Spruce St.). Open to the public. Registration is kindly requested (https://www.eventbrite.com/e/infidelities-armenian-studies-otherwise-tickets-502131828817).
RSVP required; seating strictly limited: whfellow@writing.upenn.edu
Born in Washington, DC and raised in Oxon Hill, JASON REYNOLDS is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen books. At nine years old, he drew inspiration from rap music, and began writing poetry. He now writes primarily for elementary and middle school aged kids, including Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks, Stuntboy, in the Meantime, and Long Way Down, which was named a Newbery Honor Book, and best young adult work by the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Awards. His book, Ghost, was a National Book Award Finalist for Young People’s Literature. He also wrote a Marvel Comic, Miles Morales: Spider-Man, in 2017, just three years after his first novel, When I Was the Greatest, won the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent.
RSVP required; seating strictly limited: whfellow@writing.upenn.edu
Born in Washington, DC and raised in Oxon Hill, JASON REYNOLDS is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen books. At nine years old, he drew inspiration from rap music, and began writing poetry. He now writes primarily for elementary and middle school aged kids, including Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks, Stuntboy, in the Meantime, and Long Way Down, which was named a Newbery Honor Book, and best young adult work by the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Awards. His book, Ghost, was a National Book Award Finalist for Young People’s Literature. He also wrote a Marvel Comic, Miles Morales: Spider-Man, in 2017, just three years after his first novel, When I Was the Greatest, won the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent.
Join University Life in celebrating Pride by making customized pronoun pins; we want to see how you wear your Pride!
In celebration of the Women's History Month, Makuu and PWC are planning on hosting a program called Mindful Pause on March 28, TUE 1-2pm.
Looking forward to sharing community with a reading from the book Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey and mindful movement and meditation facilitated by S. Craig, Associate Director at Makuu.
Free book copies and sweet treats will be available!
Join University Life in celebrating Pride by making customized pronoun pins; we want to see how you wear your Pride!
Join this collaborative effort by the LGBT Center and Wellness at Penn to explore the nuances of queer and trans sex, sexuality, and relationships. Over the course of three, discussion-based workshops, we will re-imagine sex education and messages about sexuality, explore queer and trans pleasure, and offer tips and tools for developing healthy and affirming relationships. Participants are welcome to attend any or all sessions, registration is strongly suggested but not required, and food will be provided. Register here: https://tinyurl.com/queersexworkshop
Learn about the complex and beautiful design of Buki, also known as Mandarin Squares: woven and embroidered silk emblems of rank worn on the outer coats of Chinese statesmen, military officials, and their wives for over 600 years. After a short presentation on the history of this art form by Steve Lang, Keeper of the Museum’s Asian and Oceanian collections, students will view Mandarin Squares from the Museum collection and design their own "rank” on a piece of fabric.
Free with Penncard. Dinner and materials provided.
Making Workshops are Museum-sponsored events that encourage Penn undergraduate and graduate students to become more familiar with the Museum’s collection by getting their hands involved. These events provide a fun and educational setting to promote social interaction and engage students with artifacts and ethnographic objects. Create something related to the objects or theme of the night!
Join this collaborative effort by the LGBT Center and Wellness at Penn to explore the nuances of queer and trans sex, sexuality, and relationships. Over the course of three, discussion-based workshops, we will re-imagine sex education and messages about sexuality, explore queer and trans pleasure, and offer tips and tools for developing healthy and affirming relationships. Participants are welcome to attend any or all sessions, registration is strongly suggested but not required, and food will be provided. Register here: https://tinyurl.com/queersexworkshop