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November 17, 2021

Camille T. Dungy & Ross Gay: Black Nature, Poetry, and Coexistence

in conversation with Aya de León and Maurya Kerr

Wednesday, November 17th 2021

5:00 – 6:30pm PST

Watch the recording here!


October 20, 2021

Celebrating Cave Canem: Cornelius Eady with Morgan Parker & Cameron Awkward-Rich

in conversation with Chiyuma Elliott & Vincente Perez

Wednesday, October 20th 2021

5:00 – 6:30pm PST


August 1, 2021

ARC is thrilled that our partnership with Engaging the Senses Foundation and our Poetry & the Senses initiative is a feature in California Arts Council’s premier new arts & culture magazine, DREAM!

May 20, 2021

You listened well – Ramona Naddaff
to witness the miracle of your heart on the outside. – Ken Ueno
I have never known myself any other way – reelaviolette botts-ward
What does it feel like to stretch without longing? – Vethea Cerna Cole
Fire makes a bad lover, the rumor goes – Sara Mumolo
and yet, you are still here – Elizabeth Zhiying Feng
I experience grief in space – Maw Shein Win
I put you down in the poem. – Noah Warren*

May 14, 2021

Thought Log #15

The dawn is the opposite direction.

Follow the lacy trails through the valley of doom.

I dim from the outside & quiver on the inside.

Siren sounds from the bog.

Flamadiddle, Long Roll, Ratamacue.

Swollen glimmers, bewildered chickens.

We met in a tasting parlor.

Stonecrop, scotch broom, willets.

Sentence without verbs.

Amber light radiates from turnpike.

Scratchy cough, fever aches. 

Weather insurance is an untapped marketplace.

Making Trauma Notes

Questions of culpability are often both foreground and background in my discussions about writing trauma with Rusty Morrison.* They emerge because I’m working on a book of connected poems that explore trauma’s antecedents and legacies, its truths and untruths. I use the writing itself as a means to question how one’s traumas emerge from, and merge with, the emergencies erupting all around us— climate, cultural crises, much more. 

Thought Log #15

The dawn is the opposite direction.

Follow the lacy trails through the valley of doom.

I dim from the outside & quiver on the inside.

Siren sounds from the bog.

Flamadiddle, Long Roll, Ratamacue.

Swollen glimmers, bewildered chickens.

We met in a tasting parlor.

Stonecrop, scotch broom, willets.

Sentence without verbs.

Amber light radiates from turnpike.

Scratchy cough, fever aches. 

Weather insurance is an untapped marketplace.

Making Trauma Notes

Questions of culpability are often both foreground and background in my discussions about writing trauma with Rusty Morrison.* They emerge because I’m working on a book of connected poems that explore trauma’s antecedents and legacies, its truths and untruths. I use the writing itself as a means to question how one’s traumas emerge from, and merge with, the emergencies erupting all around us— climate, cultural crises, much more. 

May 13, 2021

Emergency

sanctified children

on the emergence of blackgirl spirit form
+ the discovery of inner wisdom

BY REELAVIOLETTE BOTTS-WARD

i often stare
at how fire
dances, and
wonder if
ever i could
be that free

i often notice
what wind does
to tree, and
wonder if she’s
fighting or
dancing. i be

moving my body
like art in my mirror
making play thing
out my own skin
making graceful
out the clumsy
hips of me. i be

“In the present characterized by an excess of openings and dissolving boundaries, we are losing the capacity for closure, and this means that life is becoming a purely additive process. For something to die, life must find its own closure. If life is deprived of any possibility of closure, it will end in non-time.” – Byung-Chul Han

May 11, 2021

Mirrors

a binding of various journal entries on the power of generational knowledge, healing, and coping

Vethea Cerna Cole

May 10, 2021

Poetry & the Senses Spring 2021 Fellows Reading

Monday, May 10th 2021

4:30-6:00pm PDT

Watch the recording here!

April 26, 2021

Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Natalie Diaz, and Aja Monet

in conversation with ARC Poetry & the Senses Fellows reelaviolette botts-ward and Ken Ueno

Monday, April 26, 2021 

4:30-6:00pm PDT

Watch the recording here!


This event was funded by Engaging the Senses Foundation and co-sponsored by the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs, the Center for Race & Gender, and the Department of Ethnic Studies.

April 12, 2021

“You are getting dressed. You stand in front
of a mirror. And your peers are that mirror
telling you: You’re not wearing pants.
Why aren’t you wearing pants?”

“What would I do if this was a momentwhere somebody cared?”

How does my body make room for
another who perceives my senses?
—Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge

April 6, 2021

Yes, there is art that sits on canvas or the page but there is also art that sits on bodies. We know this because we feel. We feel because we want to live. And though it may seem at times an impossible task, it is one completely worthy of you. From here, we create.

March 17, 2021

A poetry reading featuring:

Terrance Hayes and Simone White

in conversation with Chiyuma Elliott

Wednesday, March 17, 2021 

4:00-5:30pm PDT

Watch the recording here!