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Poets Resist: Voices of Dissent

Watch the Video: https://vp.telvue.com/preview?id=T01221&video=324918

Tickets $5 - SOLD OUT

A night of political poetry with Reuben Jackson, Tina Escaja with her translator Kristin DykstraSarah BrowningSimone John, and Burlington's Muslim Girls Making Change. Poets will read/perform poetry about the current political climate, racism, and/or injustices in our society: poems that speak to resistance! With an introduction by Vermont Poet Laureate Chard DeNiord.

It is our hope that a collection of diverse and underrepresented voices will inspire hope, change, and action in this current political climate, as well as remind us of the importance of free speech and voices of dissent in a truly free democracy.

Sponsored by and a benefit for the ACLU Foundation of Vermont. Co-sponsored by Goddard College. A Vermont Arts 2017 event, a program of the Vermont Arts Council.

Tickets $5 - available in the bookstore at 77 Main Street, Montpelier, till 5:00 PM TODAY or AT THE DOOR at the Unitarian Church starting at 6:30 PM.

The poetry reading will take place on Tuesday, November 14, 2017 at 7:00pm at the Unitarian Church in Montpelier, with:

  • Reuben Jackson, VPR Jazz host and Vermont poet;

  • Tina Escaja, Professor of Spanish and director, Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies, UVM, and destructivist/a cyber-poet;

  • Sarah Browning, Co-founder and executive director of Split This Rock in Washington, D.C. and co-editor of D.C. Poets Against the War: An Anthology;

  • Simone John, Boston poet and author of Testify, a book about the trial of Trayvon Martin’s murder;

  • Muslim Girls Making Change, four youth from Burlington who perform politically minded spoken word and poetry slams;

  • Chard DeNiord, Vermont Poet Laureate, who will make an introduction.

About the Poets

Reuben Jackson is the host of Friday Night Jazz on Vermont Public Radio. He also serves as a workshop leader with the Young Writers Project. His music reviews have appeared on National Public Radio's All Things Considered, in the Washington Post, and jazz-related periodicals such as Jazz Times. His poetry has appeared in 32 anthologies, and in a volume entitled fingering the keys. He lives in Winooski, and is working on a manuscript entitled Scattered Clouds.

Tina Escaja (Alm@ Pérez) is a destructivist/a cyber-poet@, digital artist and scholar based in Burlington, Vermont. As a literary critic, she has published extensively on gender and contemporary Latin American and Spanish poetry and technology. Her creative work transcends the traditional book form, leaping into digital art, robotics, augmented reality and multimedia projects exhibited in museums and galleries in Spain, Mexico and the United States. Escaja has received numerous recognitions and awards, and her work has been translated into six languages. Her latest book/project "Manual Destructivista/Destructivist Manual" was selected among the Top Ten bilingual poetry books by the Latino Book Review during the National Poetry Month. She is the co-editor, with Mark Eisner, of Poetry in Resistance / Poesía en Resistencia (Anthology), forthcoming from Mad Hat Press. 

Kristin Dykstra’s translations of poetry collections by Reina María RodríguezJuan Carlos FloresAngel Escobar, and Marcelo Morales were published by the University of Alabama Press in 2014 and 2016, each with her critical introduction. She also translated Tina Escaja's Manual Destructivista (2016). Dykstra is currently co-translating and editing Maqroll’s Prayer and Other Poems, a collection by Álvaro Mutis (Colombia) to be published by New York Review Books in 2018. With Kent Johnson, she is co-editor of Materia Prima, an anthology dedicated to Amanda Berenguer (Uruguay) forthcoming from Ugly Duckling Presse in 2018.

Sarah Browning is co-founder and executive director of Split This Rock: Poetry of Provocation & Witness and an Associate Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. Author of two collections of poems, Killing Summer and Whiskey in the Garden of Eden, and co-editor of D.C. Poets Against the War: An Anthology, she is the recipient of artist fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, a Creative Communities Initiative grant, and the People Before Profits Poetry Prize. She has been guest editor or co-edited special issues of Beltway Poetry Quarterly, The Delaware Poetry Review, and POETRY magazine. Since 2006, Browning has co-hosted the Sunday Kind of Love poetry series at Busboys and Poets in Washington, DC.

Simone John is a poet, educator, and freelance writer based in Boston, Massachusetts. Since completing her MFA at Goddard College, Simone has devised youth poetry workshops that explore hip hop culture and poetry as a form of protest. Her poetry and essays have been published online and in print in The Pitkin Review, The Writer in the World, and the Elohi Gadugi Journal. Her first full-length poetry collection, Testify, is available from Octopus Books. Visit her website at www.simonejohn.com.

Muslim Girls Making Change 

Kiran Waqar, 17, is a high school senior at South Burlington High School who is dedicated to social justice. In the past, Kiran has led drives and campaigns for various cases from the Syrian refugee crisis to increasing youth voices in movements to anti-poverty advocacy. She is a leader who is focussed and consistently works toward making her world a better place. 

Balkisa is also a 17-year-old and is a senior at Burlington High School. She is a leader in the community who continues to work on social justice issues wether it's through poetry, having conversations, attending workshops she's there. It's important to her to stand up for all forms of oppression and injustice as well as influencing her fellow youth to get involved. 

Hawa Adam, a rising senior at Burlington High School is a passionate and driven individual. Her push for social justice can be seen in the numerous programs, projects and events she has started up and participated in. She continues to educate and encourage those around her to get involved so they too can have an impact! 

Lena Ginawi is a 17-year-old senior at South Burlington High School. She is tired of staying silent on topics revolving around social, racial, and environment issues. She tries her best to encourage youth to engage in these conversations, and go out to create change themselves. 

Chard DeNiord is currently a professor of English at Providence College and the Poet Laureate of Vermont. 

Sponsored by:

 

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Date: 11/14/2017
Time: 7:00pm - 8:00pm
Place:

Unitarian Church of Montpelier
130 Main Street
Montpelier, VT 05602
United States