A livestreamed recording of the event will be available soon here.
Poets Jennifer Reimer and Aimee Suzara joined the Arts Research Center on October 16 for Poetry & the Mythic Imagination, an evening of readings and conversation moderated by Erika Higbee, Ph.D. student in English and Mellon-Chancellor Fellow at UC Berkeley.
Reimer and Suzara each read from their most recent collections, sharing work that examined how stories, both inherited and invented, can shape our sense of belonging. Reimer began her reading with a quote from poet Jack Spicer: “Any fool can get into an ocean / But it takes a Goddess / To get out of one.” From there, she read from her work Keşke, which reimagines the myth of Calypso through the lens of migration and desire, while Suzara’s Souvenir confronted colonial legacies and cultural memory through sharp, lyrical reflection.
Before beginning her reading, Suzara brought with her three powerful objects: a Palestinian keffiyeh, a malong (a traditional Filipino wrap-around skirt) and a model of a Bangka (a traditional Filipino boat). As she moved between English, Spanish, and Tagalog, Suzara destabilized the colonial gaze and examined what it means to both look and be looked at. She described language as a form of time travel and water as a symbol of connection for islanders and diasporic communities. She then shared her trilingual poem “We come swimming,” a poem on migration, identity, and belonging. Her poems evoked amphibious figures, part human, part fish, linking myth, colonial history, and the endurance of those who, as she writes, “come in boats or come swimming… bangka, take me home.”
As the poets read, the audience leaned in, listening to the quiet that gathered between each line. Their poetry revealed how storytelling transforms the past, bringing what history leaves behind back into living conversation. Their words spoke to the power of poetry to reimagine myth and memory, offering new ways of seeing and understanding across time and place.
The atmosphere inside ARC reflected that same spirit of intimacy and creativity. Outside, the air was cold, but the space glowed warmly under soft lights. Books by both poets rested on tables along the side, ready for guests to browse. A small stamp station offered custom bookmarks, and two audience chairs held hidden sticky notes, later revealed as giveaway prizes.
In the discussion that followed, Higbee invited both poets to reflect on what it means to write with and against inherited stories. The conversation ranged from the feminist reimagining of myth to the ethics of voice and representation in diasporic writing. Reimer spoke about how mythology allows for an ongoing dialogue between the personal and the collective, while Suzara discussed how her work confronts the limitations of language shaped by histories of domination. Audience members joined in with questions about translation, ancestry, and how creative practice can become a space for reclamation and redefinition
Even after the event officially ended, people lingered, talking, stamping bookmarks, and thumbing through books. It was a small but memorable gathering, one that captured ARC’s ongoing mission to create spaces where art and conversation meet.
As Reimer reflected afterward:
“I am thinking of the various language performed and emerging from the work, Aimee’s interrogation and disruption of language’s (double or triple-through Spanish, English, Tagalog) colonial domination and power, and my own project of feminist reclamation of the language of wish, desire, and longing.”
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