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Poetry &: Worker Writers School

December 4, 2021

Saturday, December 4, 4 pm

Pugsly’s Barbershop
3 Main Street
Kingston, New York

With live, simultaneous English-Spanish translation.

Building on nearly thirty-five years of poetry programs at Dia Art Foundation and curated by José Olivarez, Poetry & is a new series that invites poets to reimagine their work and its public presentation. In conversation with other artists and art forms, each event offers new encounters with poetry at and beyond Dia. 

For Poetry &’s inaugural engagement, members of the Worker Writers School, an organization that promotes poetry by working-class, unionized writers, have been the featured artists in a month-long series of readings and installations at Dia Beacon and throughout the Hudson Valley. In this final event, poets Seth Goldman and Christine Yvette Lewis will read at Pugsly’s Barbershop in Kingston, New York. This reading will also feature representatives from the Worker Justice Center of New York. A poem in neon by Lewis from the recent collection Coronavirus Haiku will stay on long-term view in Worker Justice Center’s Kingston office.

The series began with an intervention in Dia Beacon’s galleries. From November 12 to 15, the neon haiku was displayed in the museum, and on Saturday, November 13, at 2 pm, poets Lorraine Garnett and Christine Yvette Lewis read and joined a conversation with the school’s founder Mark Nowak. After the Dia engagement, Hudson Valley residents have continued to experience the neon through installations in local storefronts, including Fish & Chikzz in New Windsor, New York, where poets Alando McIntyre and Kelebohile “Kele” Nkhereanye read their work on Saturday, November 20.
Audio: Poetry &: Worker Writers School

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