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Art & Poetry As: A Book Club

Event Series Event Series (See All)

February 24, 2025 June 30, 2025 EST

We are a collective of artists, writers, and academics with extensive experience in experimental labs across various contexts. This year, we’re embarking on a fresh project that merges the creative energy of a studio environment with the thoughtful structure of a book club.

Our goal is to bring together diverse forms of literature—academic, revolutionary, and poetic—and uncover the themes that connect them. Through this process, we aim to inspire participants to explore archival silences, feminist politics, and community organization within literature, existing projects, as well as their own work.

From February 24 through June 30, we will meet from 1:30–2:45 PM (Eastern Time) on the last Monday of every month (excepting the month of May). You can join us for the entire series or choose the sessions that resonate most with your interests.

At each session, cohort participants will reflect on the suggested readings and resources by identifying and discussing their shared themes. Participants will also be encouraged to explore these resources and their shared themes in the context of their own ongoing or anticipated projects. Discussions will be lightly guided by poet Bianca Swift, and Artist Marcia X.

This is an opportunity to engage in rich discussions, challenge your perspectives, grow your network, and collaborate with others in a dynamic and open environment. Whether you’re a seasoned thinker or someone looking to deepen their understanding, we welcome you to join us.

You can join the discussion group by registering here (https://events.zoom.us/e/view/preview/qPYOd3xwQQS7Vl4D336WyQ). You will be asked to complete a few short questions to help us in discussion planning. When filling out the form, you will also be asked to select which sessions you are interested and able to attend.

Event Format

Virtual

Event Price

Free

Schedule

During this session, we will introduce the overarching themes of our book club, including art and poetry as tools to question, respond to, and write our own histories; art and poetry as artifacts that encode historical perspectives and experiences; and art and poetry as methods for examining and imagining within archival silences. As many of these themes will appear together within an artistic work, this conversation will aim to lay the foundation for recognizing them before we dive more deeply into specific topics.

Readings:

  • Experiment #1- other older poems, written by Artist Marcia X

During this session, we will examine the ways in which art and poetry are methods for transmitting memory and observing our past, present and futures. In our discussion, we will explore examples of documentary poetics and other forms of artistic expression that record and remember historical events and the humans who encounter them.

Readings:

  • Citizen: An American Lyric, written by Claudia Rankine
  • ballast, written by Quenton Baker
  • “What Was I But Factory [Video],” written and directed by Victoria Adukwei Bulley, and with direction of photography by Artist Marcia X

During this session, we will explore art and poetry as essential tools for responding or reacting to events of the past, present or imagined future. This month’s discussion will ask us to consider the role of poetry and art in exploring how these events impact our ideas of ourselves and our community. In so doing, we will also consider how art and poetry collapse the distance of time, revealing new connections between our present and our subject matter.  

Readings:

  • Incendiary Art, written by Patricia Smith
  • Whereas, written by Layli Long Soldier

During this session, we will examine how art and poetry can explore the gaps created intentionally and unintentionally by the archival record. We will consider how art and poetry can lay bare where archival silences exist and can aid us in illustrating or imagining what could have existed within those silences.

Readings:

During this session, we will discuss readings or materials selected by the cohort. We may choose to revisit earlier topics or readings, or we may explore entirely new ones.