BOMB Magazine presents RED READ / READ RED: PUTTING VIOLENCE DOWN IN POETRY

Each month, BOMB invites a pair of artists for an intimate dialogue and performance — an exploration of what inspires them, what challenges them, where they are, and where they want to go.

For this first event of the series, BOMB Magazine, in partnership with the Bagley Wright Lecture Series, presents a performance by poet Douglas Kearney and musician Val Jeanty.

The iconoclastic one-time performance will be followed by a short Q&A. BOMB’s fall issue will be on sale and, as a tribute to their 40th year, an archival library will be on site for your perusal.

This is a free event but seating is limited: RSVP HERE

RED READ / READ RED: PUTTING VIOLENCE DOWN IN POETRY

Douglas Kearney has long engaged the conflation of violence and entertainment in U.S.American culture, from badman folklore to postcards of lynchings. Still, there are questions that haunt. What are the ethics of representing violence? How might poetic aestheticizations of brutality transform, reinscribe, or abet violence? Through a versioned series of essayistic vignettes presented in collaboration with SoundChemist, Val-Inc, Kearney entangles his encounters with violence as a reader, poet, and performer.

21+ up
ASL interpreter
Proof of vaccination mandatory: this ensures a safe, socially-distanced experience, and seated guests will be able to enjoy a cocktail whilst enjoying the art.

Douglas Kearney has published six books, including Buck Studies (Fence Books, 2016), winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award, the CLMP Firecracker Award for Poetry, and silver medalist for the California Book Award (Poetry). M. NourbeSe Philip calls Kearney’s collection of libretti, Someone Took They Tongues. (Subito, 2016), “a seismic, polyphonic mash-up that disturbs the tongue.” Kearney’s Mess and Mess and (Noemi Press, 2015), was a Small Press Distribution Handpicked Selection that Publisher’s Weekly called “an extraordinary book.” He has received a Whiting Writer’s Award, residencies/fellowships from Cave Canem, The Rauschenberg Foundation, and others. Kearney teaches Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities.

Val Jeanty, also known as Val-Inc, is an Haitian afrofuturist, composer, turntablist, and professor at Berklee College of Music. Jeanty is a pioneer of the electronic music subgenre Afro- Electronica (also called “Electro-Vodou”) incorporating Haitian Vodou rhythms with electronic instruments.

The Bagley Wright Lecture Series on Poetry supports contemporary poets as they explore in-depth their own thinking on poetry and poetics, and give a series of lectures resulting from these investigations. Lectures are delivered publicly in partnership with institutions and organizations nationwide. Find out more about past, present, and future lecturers, and explore the archive at www.bagleywrightlectures.org.