Friday, March 17: Bodies in spaces forced to accommodate

Friday, March 17

Doors 7:30pm
Reading 8pm

*Bodies in spaces forced to accommodate:
Poetry of Resound, Recovery & Re-translation
feat.
Kimberly Alidio
Jen Hofer
Micah Tasaka
Sa Whitley
& Angela Peñaredondo

Join us as we celebrate Kimberly Alidio's Southern California tour for her book, after projects the resound (Black Radish). The evening features readings from after projects the resound by Kimberly Alidio. Special guests are Jen Hofer, Sa Whitley, Micah Tasaka and Angela Peñaredondo. Support your visiting and local poets and friendly feminists.

this reading will explore:
“How to write the migrations, distinctions, the threats to one’s humanity? – Hoa Nguyen (on Kimberly Alidio's, after projects the resound (Black Radish)

How to rearticulate survival as more as just survival but as a flourishing in spite of marginalized positionality, gender binaries, patriarchy and other systems of oppression?

How language and the retranslation of language in poetry can be a fulcrum to recovery, which lies at the intersection of identity and gender?

*The title of the event takes its name from Ayesha Siddiq's podcast, Pushing Hoops with Sticks, Vol. 2: You're Not Crazy and then from Kimberly Alidio's poem, "Bodies in spaces forced to accommodate," in after projects the resound

~

Kimberly Alidio wrote after projects the resound (Black Radish, 2016) and solitude being alien (dancing girl press, 2013). She is the inaugural artist-in-residence at the Center for Art and Thought and a poetry fellow of Kundiman and VONA. She received fellowships from Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program and the University of Illinois’s Asian American Studies Program, as well as a doctorate in modern American history from the University of Michigan. A tenure-track dropout and high-school teacher, she hails from Baltimore and lives in East Austin, Texas.

Jen Hofer is a Los Angeles-based poet, translator, social justice interpreter, teacher, knitter, DIY/DIT book-maker, public letter-writer, urban cyclist, and co-founder of the language justice and language experimentation collaborative Antena and the multilingual organizing collective Antena Los Ángeles, which does ongoing work to create bilingual and multilingual spaces for social justice struggle with the Boyle Heights Alliance Against Artwashing and Displacement, Defend Boyle Heights, the Los Angeles Tenants Union, the National Day Laborers Organizing Network, and many other groups. Her writings and translations are available from numerous small presses, most recently belladonna, Kenning Editions, Ugly Duckling Presse, and Writ Large Press (forthcoming). She teaches at CalArts, Otis College, and Occidental College, and organizes with the decolonial pedagogical platform at land’s edge.

Micah Tasaka is a queer biracial poet from the Inland Empire exploring the intersections of identity, spirituality, gender, sexuality, and recovering from trauma. They received their undergraduate degree in creative writing from the University of California, Riverside. They have performed throughout Southern California and have featured in Riverside, Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Palm Springs. Their debut chapbook, Whales in the Watertank, was self-published in 2014. They write for The Blood Jet Writing Hour literary blog, and their published work can be found in In The Words Of Women 2016 International Anthology and Inlandia: A Literary Journey.

Sa Whitley is a black queer poet from Maryland who resides in Los Angeles, California. She has published work in Bozalta Journal and Toe Good Poetry. As a Cave Canem fellow, she is often nourished by the poetry of other Cave Canem poets across the country and across the world. Currently, she is a Gender Studies PhD Student at UCLA who studies black feminism and intersectional movements against subprime foreclosure in Baltimore. Her academic work has been supported by the Center for the Study of Women and the UC Consortium for Black Studies. She also enjoys fishing, dancing to funk music & Motown, and baking decent apple pies.

Angela Peñaredondo (host) is a Pilipinx/Pin@y poet, artist and educator born in Iloilo City, Philippines. She is the author of All Things Lose Thousands of Times (Inlandia Institute, winner of the Hillary Gravendyk Poetry Prize) and the chapbook Maroon (Jamii Publishing). Angela’s work has appeared in Drunken Boat, AAWW’s The Margins, Four Way Review, Cream City Review, Southern Humanities Review and elsewhere. Angela resides in Southern California, drifting between deserts, beaches, lowly cities and socially engineered suburbs. www.apenaredondo.com