Museum of the African Diaspora 685 Mission Street
Thu
Jun 20, 2019
3:00 am
 - 
3:30 am
Register
Not a member? Join now

About

In this weekly summer series, eight Bay Area poets share new poems created in response to the current exhibitions.  They will also describe the processes they employ in writing ekphrastic work.  Come and see, come and listen, come and experience the art that moves your spirit to consider power and liberation.

June 6 - August 1 feature individual performances.

These readings and discussions culminate in the MoAD Salon with an evening of wine and performance by all the poets in this series on August 8.

Community Voices: Poets Speak is curated by Raina J. León.

The exhibition on view is Coffee, Rhum, Sugar & Gold: A Postcolonial Paradox.

Coffee, Rhum, Sugar & Gold: A Postcolonial Paradox looks at the legacy of European colonialism in the Caribbean through the work of 10 contemporary artists. Whether connected to the Caribbean by birth or focused on the region by choice, the exhibiting artists use their work as a means of examining the relationship between the power structure, those who are controlled by it, those who benefit from it, and those who actively seek to liberate themselves from it. A key driver of the exhibition is the theory that colonialism has continued to exist in other forms, and is in fact spreading through the export of soft power, the use of military force, the control of international financial and banking mechanisms, as well as the increase in globalization.

Featured Poet

Local poet Tongo Eisen-Martin, one of seven finalists for the Griffin Poetry Prize, poses for a photo Saturday June 9th, 2018. Photo: Kyler Knox

Tongo Eisen-Martin

Tongo Eisen-Martin was born in San Francisco and earned his MA at Columbia University. He is the author of someone’s dead already (Bootstrap Press, 2015), nominated for a California Book Award; and Heaven Is All Goodbyes (City Lights, 2017), which received a 2018 American Book Award, a 2018 California Book Award, was named a 2018 National California Booksellers Association Poetry Book of the Year, and was shortlisted for the 2018 Griffin International Poetry Prize.  

Eisen-Martin is also an educator and organizer whose work centers on issues of mass incarceration, extrajudicial killings of Black people, and human rights. He has taught at detention centers around the country and at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University. He lives in San Francisco.

SPD is the only non-profit literary distributor in the US. Founded in 1969, everything we do is aimed at helping essential but underrepresented literary communities participate fully in the marketplace and in the culture at large. We do this by offering book distribution, information services, and public advocacy programs to hundreds of small publishers. Ultimately, we work to connect readers with writers through independently publishers literature, getting books into the hands of those who want to read them.

Public programs at MoAD are supported in part by Target.

Made possible by

Programs, Residencies & Awards

Explore the many opportunities and experiences hosted at MoAD

Learn MORE