WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.470 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:00:01.470 --> 00:00:02.550 align:middle line:90% Good evening. 00:00:02.550 --> 00:00:04.090 align:middle line:90% Hi, everyone. 00:00:04.090 --> 00:00:04.590 align:middle line:90% Hi. 00:00:04.590 --> 00:00:06.300 align:middle line:90% I like how you have to move-- 00:00:06.300 --> 00:00:11.460 align:middle line:84% I have to move to see different parts of the room. 00:00:11.460 --> 00:00:15.780 align:middle line:84% So this has been so exciting and amazing. 00:00:15.780 --> 00:00:18.660 align:middle line:84% And I could ramble on about how honored 00:00:18.660 --> 00:00:23.790 align:middle line:84% I am to be part of this two-part event with Jen, Myriam 00:00:23.790 --> 00:00:28.530 align:middle line:84% and John, and all the people working to make it happen. 00:00:28.530 --> 00:00:35.520 align:middle line:84% But I've prepared some thoughts on the poetic practices 00:00:35.520 --> 00:00:37.920 align:middle line:84% of the people you're going to be hearing from tonight. 00:00:37.920 --> 00:00:42.210 align:middle line:84% And I come from a tradition of introduction 00:00:42.210 --> 00:00:43.770 align:middle line:84% writing where I don't read a bio, 00:00:43.770 --> 00:00:48.600 align:middle line:84% but I really encourage you to find the bios of these writers 00:00:48.600 --> 00:00:51.150 align:middle line:84% and artists online and also to check out 00:00:51.150 --> 00:00:54.300 align:middle line:84% all of the many publications that are here for sale. 00:00:54.300 --> 00:00:55.980 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:00:55.980 --> 00:00:57.990 align:middle line:84% So I'm going to introduce Myriam Moscona, 00:00:57.990 --> 00:01:00.797 align:middle line:84% and then I'm going to introduce Antena. 00:01:00.797 --> 00:01:02.880 align:middle line:84% And it'll all happen at once, and then the reading 00:01:02.880 --> 00:01:04.890 align:middle line:90% will begin. 00:01:04.890 --> 00:01:07.650 align:middle line:84% Myriam Moscona writes in Tela de Sevoya. 00:01:07.650 --> 00:01:09.660 align:middle line:90% "Language is a skin. 00:01:09.660 --> 00:01:12.640 align:middle line:84% I rub my language against the other. 00:01:12.640 --> 00:01:16.680 align:middle line:84% It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers 00:01:16.680 --> 00:01:19.520 align:middle line:90% at the tip of my words." 00:01:19.520 --> 00:01:24.540 align:middle line:84% Moscona, I suspect, remembers her dreams in precise detail, 00:01:24.540 --> 00:01:28.470 align:middle line:84% then opens them up and finds dreams inside of them 00:01:28.470 --> 00:01:32.580 align:middle line:84% to craft her inventive poetry and prose. 00:01:32.580 --> 00:01:34.920 align:middle line:84% The hybridity of Myriam's work is 00:01:34.920 --> 00:01:39.540 align:middle line:84% that her poetics is alive in all forms of consciousness. 00:01:39.540 --> 00:01:43.590 align:middle line:84% The materiality of language shatters and does not 00:01:43.590 --> 00:01:49.110 align:middle line:84% come together but revels in the possibility of reconstruction. 00:01:49.110 --> 00:01:53.940 align:middle line:84% Or as Francine Masiello writes in an afterword to Negro 00:01:53.940 --> 00:01:57.180 align:middle line:84% Marfil, which is on that table, "Moscona 00:01:57.180 --> 00:02:01.410 align:middle line:84% reminds us that the height of the subjective moment, 00:02:01.410 --> 00:02:06.150 align:middle line:84% the space in which we reach the other is fragile and tenuous. 00:02:06.150 --> 00:02:08.250 align:middle line:90% It lasts but a second. 00:02:08.250 --> 00:02:13.770 align:middle line:84% And after that, we are left to contend with the fragments. 00:02:13.770 --> 00:02:17.100 align:middle line:84% Down to the most elemental sensory detail, 00:02:17.100 --> 00:02:21.000 align:middle line:84% Moscona uses his language so that textures are never 00:02:21.000 --> 00:02:22.290 align:middle line:90% taken for granted. 00:02:22.290 --> 00:02:25.140 align:middle line:84% Even a watermark on a page refracts 00:02:25.140 --> 00:02:27.850 align:middle line:84% through the lens of multidirectional colors, 00:02:27.850 --> 00:02:30.150 align:middle line:84% shapes, sound, smells, and tastes. 00:02:30.150 --> 00:02:34.440 align:middle line:84% Moscona writes what is acid in the cornea. 00:02:34.440 --> 00:02:39.720 align:middle line:84% She asks and Jen Hofer translates in Negro Marfil. 00:02:39.720 --> 00:02:43.320 align:middle line:84% Moscona's poetics is a movement in reverberation. 00:02:43.320 --> 00:02:46.950 align:middle line:84% One dream is not a resting place of singular oddity. 00:02:46.950 --> 00:02:50.520 align:middle line:84% It is a sight to plunge deeper into the restlessness 00:02:50.520 --> 00:02:53.160 align:middle line:84% or, as she says, the answer returns 00:02:53.160 --> 00:02:58.740 align:middle line:84% to the question, a circularity restrained from exception." 00:02:58.740 --> 00:03:01.830 align:middle line:90% OK, scene change. 00:03:01.830 --> 00:03:07.530 align:middle line:84% So Antena, which is John Pluecker and Jen Hofer, 00:03:07.530 --> 00:03:11.910 align:middle line:84% they make words live in different languages 00:03:11.910 --> 00:03:15.570 align:middle line:84% simultaneously to maximize connection. 00:03:15.570 --> 00:03:20.160 align:middle line:84% So John Pluecker and Jen Hofer operate and negotiate 00:03:20.160 --> 00:03:23.760 align:middle line:84% collaboration by doing language justice, which 00:03:23.760 --> 00:03:27.570 align:middle line:84% is how they describe Antena, which envisions 00:03:27.570 --> 00:03:30.600 align:middle line:84% this interconnectedness of language and action, 00:03:30.600 --> 00:03:32.940 align:middle line:90% listening and rearticulating. 00:03:32.940 --> 00:03:35.730 align:middle line:84% And this takes the form of translating authors 00:03:35.730 --> 00:03:38.310 align:middle line:90% like Myriam Moscona. 00:03:38.310 --> 00:03:41.910 align:middle line:84% And it also takes the form of interpretive services 00:03:41.910 --> 00:03:44.730 align:middle line:84% to places like activists who are doing 00:03:44.730 --> 00:03:48.240 align:middle line:84% "Know Your Rights" training, so it's very agile and shifting. 00:03:48.240 --> 00:03:52.800 align:middle line:84% So there is a care to framing their translation. 00:03:52.800 --> 00:03:55.410 align:middle line:84% And I am always learning in this way 00:03:55.410 --> 00:03:59.040 align:middle line:84% from how they make their processes so open source. 00:03:59.040 --> 00:04:04.440 align:middle line:84% And it encompasses interpretive work, publishing, performance. 00:04:04.440 --> 00:04:07.890 align:middle line:84% And we'll experience a lot of that tonight. 00:04:07.890 --> 00:04:10.230 align:middle line:84% And a lot of that is improvised, and it's 00:04:10.230 --> 00:04:14.430 align:middle line:84% live poem-making, where there's repetition, spiraling, 00:04:14.430 --> 00:04:16.620 align:middle line:90% interpretation, and additions. 00:04:16.620 --> 00:04:19.380 align:middle line:84% So Antena's work is also available 00:04:19.380 --> 00:04:21.630 align:middle line:84% in beautiful chapbooks and pamphlets. 00:04:21.630 --> 00:04:25.950 align:middle line:84% And those are here tonight, as well as provided as an archive 00:04:25.950 --> 00:04:31.260 align:middle line:84% online to increase the accessibility of written words. 00:04:31.260 --> 00:04:34.020 align:middle line:84% So I encourage you to check that out online. 00:04:34.020 --> 00:04:36.870 align:middle line:84% I heard tonight somebody say, I've been hanging out with you 00:04:36.870 --> 00:04:38.820 align:middle line:84% or encountering you on the internet, something 00:04:38.820 --> 00:04:41.590 align:middle line:84% like that, which is a place to find them as well. 00:04:41.590 --> 00:04:44.170 align:middle line:90% So I just wanted to say-- 00:04:44.170 --> 00:04:46.470 align:middle line:84% quote some pieces from their manifesto 00:04:46.470 --> 00:04:49.140 align:middle line:84% for discomfortable writing, which 00:04:49.140 --> 00:04:51.610 align:middle line:84% sets some intentions for their practice. 00:04:51.610 --> 00:04:53.880 align:middle line:84% And one of them is to make us strangers 00:04:53.880 --> 00:04:57.810 align:middle line:84% in a place we thought was home, to find spaces for listening 00:04:57.810 --> 00:04:59.220 align:middle line:90% inside strangeness. 00:04:59.220 --> 00:05:03.210 align:middle line:84% So they're proposing discomfort is a commitment to shattering 00:05:03.210 --> 00:05:05.580 align:middle line:84% genre, refusing false divides one 00:05:05.580 --> 00:05:08.220 align:middle line:84% might struggle with in art versus activism, 00:05:08.220 --> 00:05:11.760 align:middle line:90% making art versus making money. 00:05:11.760 --> 00:05:16.110 align:middle line:84% So we can learn from Antena what decolonizing this place, 00:05:16.110 --> 00:05:19.260 align:middle line:84% and how it can be an elemental daily practice 00:05:19.260 --> 00:05:23.080 align:middle line:84% to refuse complacency, to allow risk, as they say. 00:05:23.080 --> 00:05:25.650 align:middle line:84% So I feel myself wanting to transcribe 00:05:25.650 --> 00:05:27.960 align:middle line:84% all their manifestations to embody them, 00:05:27.960 --> 00:05:30.000 align:middle line:84% to be able to sit with their calls for language 00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:33.270 align:middle line:84% justice and also language experimentation. 00:05:33.270 --> 00:05:35.190 align:middle line:84% And that tonight together, we can 00:05:35.190 --> 00:05:39.090 align:middle line:84% work with the intense aliveness of Myriam Moscona an Antena 00:05:39.090 --> 00:05:41.250 align:middle line:84% and think about words across languages, 00:05:41.250 --> 00:05:43.680 align:middle line:84% across perspectives, and using what's 00:05:43.680 --> 00:05:47.070 align:middle line:84% readily available against these forms of violence 00:05:47.070 --> 00:05:49.590 align:middle line:84% that we also see every day that wish 00:05:49.590 --> 00:05:52.870 align:middle line:84% to suppress such shape-shifting resistances. 00:05:52.870 --> 00:05:55.740 align:middle line:84% So please help me in welcoming these wonderful writers. 00:05:55.740 --> 00:05:57.240 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:05:57.240 --> 00:06:01.440 align:middle line:90% 00:06:01.440 --> 00:06:05.390 align:middle line:84% [INAUDIBLE] I really want you to introduce us.