The Poetry Center presents poet-translator-activists John Pluecker and Jen Hofer, reading and in conversation, to debut the Poetry Center’s Tripwire Cross-Cultural Poetics Series. John Pluecker reads from Ford Over (Noemi Press, 2016), poems from an unpublished manuscript, Green Go Home, and poems from an untitled unpublished work in progress. Jen Hofer reads from her translation of Virginia Lucas’s Amé.RICA (tu valor de cambio), as Ah.me.RICH.ah (your exchange value) (forthcoming, Litmus Press, 2019), followed by an unpublished manuscript of new works, titled conditions. The poets’ interlaced performances are followed briefly by a conversation with the audience.

For the second event in The Poetry Center’s premier Tripwire Cross-Cultural Poetics Series, we present Antena, a language justice and language experimentation collaborative, represented by poet-translators Jen Hofer and John Pluecker, reading, in performance, and in conversation. Antena enact their collaborative practice by engaging in topics chosen through audience feedback, free-flowing association, and discussion of current and past projects, culminating in a performance of improvised interpretative poem-making using excerpts out of June Jordan’s Naming Our Destiny: New & Selected Poems (Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1989) and Antena’s own RECLICLADOS LANGUAGES リサイクルされた LENGUAJES RECYCLED 言語 (Libros Antena Books, 2016). The performance is followed by a conversation with the audience.

The Poetry Center presents Giancarlo Huapaya (with translator Ryan Greene), Omar Pimienta, and José Antonio Villarán, of Cardboard House Press/Cartonera Collective, reading from their work and conducting a collective experiment in exchange with the audience, then engaging in conversation regarding their poetry, the work of the press and bookmaking collective, and the cultural politics of translation. This is the first event of two in The Poetry Center’s 2019 Tripwire Cross-Cultural Poetics Series.

The Poetry Center presents Giancarlo Huapaya, Omar Pimienta, and José Antonio Villarán, along with members of the Cartonera Collective—Ryan Greene, Raquel Denis, and Claudia Nuñez—at The Green Arcade, San Francisco. Pimienta reads from Album of Fences/El Album de las Rejas, translated by Villarán (Cardboard House Press, 2018); Huapaya reads from his forthcoming book Gamer, with translations by Greene; Villarán reads from unpublished work; then Greene, Denis, and Nuñez present their bookmaking workshop and translation work, reading from Chilean poet Raúl Hernandez’s Unemployed Poems, translated by John Burns (Cartonera Collective). This was the second of two evenings in The Poetry Center’s 2019 Tripwire Cross-Cultural Poetics Series.

The Poetry Center, in conjunction with the Tripwire Cross-Cultural Poetics Series, presents two of the more outstanding younger Black writers and intellectuals at work in the US and UK, in this remote-access program. Momtaza Mehri, appearing from North Africa, reads from her poetry, and Zoé Samudzi, appearing from the Central U.S., reads a selection of others’ poetry and prose, prior to the two writers joining in conversation. Mehri and Samudzi are introduced and accompanied by alex cruse, emcee, with David Buuck speaking briefly regarding the Tripwire Cross-Cultural Poetics Series and its collaboration with The Poetry Center, and of Tripwire journal and the Tripwire Pamphlet Series.

The Poetry Center, in conjunction with the Tripwire Cross-Cultural Poetics Series, presents a Memorial Tribute to Etel Adnan, at Medicine for Nightmares, their gallery space, in San Francisco. Participants in the program include, in order of presentation: David Buuck, Zaina Alsous, Naz Cuguoğlu, Fady Joudah, Stefania Pandolfo, and Camille Roy, with Steve Dickison providing introductions.

An excerpt from Etel Adnan’s film Motion (2012; video incorporated into Pandolfo’s talk) appears by kind permission of Simone Fattal.