Grief Terrain: A Poetry Reading by LaTasha N. Diggs and Marilyn Hacker

October 19, 2023 | 6:30pm - 9:00pm

Sulzberger Parlor

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Add to Calendar 2023-10-19 18:30:00 2023-10-19 21:00:00 Grief Terrain: A Poetry Reading by LaTasha N. Diggs and Marilyn Hacker Image Left photo credit: Margo Berdeshevsky | Right photo credit: Willy Somma Come see poets LaTasha N. Diggs and Marilyn Hacker, whose new collections explode open a kaleidoscope of languages and literary forms and document spaces soaked in memory, history, and trauma. In Calligraphies, National Book Award-winner Marilyn Hacker memorializes France and a contemporary Beirut of revolution, economic collapse and labneh–a commemoration of exiles and refugees, living and dead. LaTasha N. Diggs mourns the passing of her mother in Village, a wild, hybrid, and sonically dense book that packs together Harlem, death certificates, and a heteroglossia that includes Māori, Arabic, Yoruba, and more. In conversation with Associate Director of Creative Writing Ken Chen. Reserve a seat on Eventbrite here. Ferociously global and as local as Harlem, LaTasha N. Diggs’s Village is, Camille Dungy writes, “part instruction manual, part celebration, part dance party, part garden tour.” A writer, vocalist and performance/sound artist, she has presented and performed at El Museo del Barrio, The Museum of Modern Art, Walker Art Center, and the 2015 Venice Biennale. Diggs received a C.D. Wright Award for Poetry, Whiting Award and National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship. Diggs also wrote TwERK (Belladonna, 2013), which Cathy Park Hong writes, “recombines Black slang, Japanese, Spanish, Chamorro, and Tagalog into a remastered Afrofuturist song.” Jessica Greenbaum calls Marilyn Hacker “our sage femme of form and politics,” and writes that “her language from Paris, New York and Beirut, is always the cry from the street—and the heart—because Hacker is one of our great translators of the human experience.” Based in France, Hacker is the author of nineteen volumes of poems, including A Stranger’s Mirror, longlisted for the National Book Award, and Presentation Piece, which won the National Book Award. Her other honors include the Lambda Literary Award, the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, the Robert Fagles Translation Prize, and the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry. Phil Metres writes, Marilyn Hacker is “one of our greatest contemporary masters of poetic form.” Sulzberger Parlor Barnard College barnard-admin@digitalpulp.com America/New_York public
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A photo of poet Marilyn Hacker, a mid-sixties white woman with short white hair next to a photo of poet LaTasha N. Diggs, a mid-thirties Black woman with a patterned head wrap — Left photo credit: Margo Berdeshevsky | Right photo credit: Willy Somma

Come see poets LaTasha N. Diggs and Marilyn Hacker, whose new collections explode open a kaleidoscope of languages and literary forms and document spaces soaked in memory, history, and trauma. In Calligraphies, National Book Award-winner Marilyn Hacker memorializes France and a contemporary Beirut of revolution, economic collapse and labneh–a commemoration of exiles and refugees, living and dead. LaTasha N. Diggs mourns the passing of her mother in Village, a wild, hybrid, and sonically dense book that packs together Harlem, death certificates, and a heteroglossia that includes Māori, Arabic, Yoruba, and more. In conversation with Associate Director of Creative Writing Ken Chen. Reserve a seat on Eventbrite here.

Ferociously global and as local as Harlem, LaTasha N. Diggs’s Village is, Camille Dungy writes, “part instruction manual, part celebration, part dance party, part garden tour.” A writer, vocalist and performance/sound artist, she has presented and performed at El Museo del Barrio, The Museum of Modern Art, Walker Art Center, and the 2015 Venice Biennale. Diggs received a C.D. Wright Award for Poetry, Whiting Award and National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship. Diggs also wrote TwERK (Belladonna, 2013), which Cathy Park Hong writes, “recombines Black slang, Japanese, Spanish, Chamorro, and Tagalog into a remastered Afrofuturist song.”

Jessica Greenbaum calls Marilyn Hacker “our sage femme of form and politics,” and writes that “her language from Paris, New York and Beirut, is always the cry from the street—and the heart—because Hacker is one of our great translators of the human experience.” Based in France, Hacker is the author of nineteen volumes of poems, including A Stranger’s Mirror, longlisted for the National Book Award, and Presentation Piece, which won the National Book Award. Her other honors include the Lambda Literary Award, the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, the Robert Fagles Translation Prize, and the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry. Phil Metres writes, Marilyn Hacker is “one of our greatest contemporary masters of poetic form.”

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