Tag Archives: Poetry

Word Up: Book Release Party: Belonging, On Self: Poems on Dominirican Healing

Saturday, March 30, 2024 – 2:00pm to 3:30pm
Word Up Community Bookshop Librería Comunitaria
2113 Amsterdam Ave.
New YorkNY 10032
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https://withfriends.co/event/17648560/postponed_book_release_party_belonging_on_self_poems_on_dominirican_healing

Join us for an intimate and powerful evening to celebrate “Belonging, On Self: Poems on Dominirican Healing” by Cynthia Roman Cabrera. This collection of poems invites you on a profound journey of self-discovery and healing within the context of the Dominirican experience. Let yourself be captivated as the author reads excerpts, providing insights into the layers of healing explored in the collection, followed by a signing.

Meet other creatives, engage in meaningful conversations, and gain a deeper understanding of the creative process. Enjoy light refreshments, and vegetarian and chicken pastelitos. Don’t miss this literary celebration filled with words, flavors, y comunidad.

This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket with 30 max attendees. Please register in advance.

In compliance with Word Up Community Safety guidelines, all attendees for this event must wear a mask inside.

Word Up Community Bookshop is located at 2113 Amsterdam Ave. (& 165th St.) in Washington Heights, NYC. You can take the 1 train to 168th St and the A/C train to 163rd or 168th  St.

ABOUT THE BOOK

belonging, on self: poems on dominirican healing is a collection of poems to heal the inner child of a Dominirican body. It explores the journey toward self-actualization as each poem break open themes of abandonment and abuse, homelessness, coming out, surviving poverty, finding joy, and discovering the self despite the circumstances. At once, the poems are glimpses into one of many New York-born immigrants making sense out of family generational traumas, traversing language barriers, and creating a second skin of island folk tales in new lands. Using vivid place and space as characters, belonging, on self walks with a delicate evolution of self through community with infinite compassion and intimacy. The collection spans across communities in remembrance of the past, its pains, and passes the baton for others to explore healing fuelled by joy and radical self-love.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cynthia Roman Cabrera is a Dominican and Puerto Rican native of New York City. She is a storyteller, essayist, and poet exploring culture and identity, cityscape, familismo, and the healing of her inner child. She has been published in Brooklyn Poets, changing womxn collective, HerStry, Breadcrumbs, Moko Magazine, Spanglish Voces, and the Bronx Magazine.

Word Up: Reading Abu Toha, Reading Gaza

Sunday, March 3, 2024 – 11:00am to 2:00pm
Word Up Community Bookshop Librería Comunitaria
2113 Amsterdam Ave.
New YorkNY 10032

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Doors open at 11:30am | Event starts at 12pm

Join Word Up for a reading of Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza, the award-winning debut collection by Palestinian poet and founder of the Edward Said Library in Gaza Mosab Abu Toha. The night will commence with a reading by American writer and Abu Toha friend Richard Hoffman, followed by community participation to read from Abu Toha’s work and your own on Gaza/Palestine.

Mosab Abu Toha will join for the Q & A via Zoom from Cairo! The on-site discussant will be Hany Massoud, longtime producer for Democracy Now and founder of the Inwood Arabic Class.

This is a fundraiser for Middle East Children’s Alliance – Meca for Peace, a nonprofit organization working for the rights and the well-being of children in the Middle East. MECA supports dozens of community projects for Palestinian children and refugees.

This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket. Please register in advance.

In compliance with Word Up Community Safety guidelines, all attendees for this event must wear a mask inside.

Word Up Community Bookshop is located at 2113 Amsterdam Ave. (& 165th St.) in Washington Heights, NYC. You can take the 1 train to 168th St and the A/C train to 163rd or 168th  St.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet, scholar, and librarian who was born in Gaza and has spent his life there. He is the founder of the Edward Said Library, Gaza’s first English-language library. Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza is his debut book of poems. The collection won an American Book Award, a 2022 Palestine Book Award and was named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, as well as the 2022 Walcott Poetry Prize.In 2019-2020, Abu Toha was a Visiting Poet in the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard University.Abu Toha is a columnist for Arrowsmith Press, and his writings from Gaza have also appeared in The Nation and Literary Hub. His poems have been published in Poetry, The Nation, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Poetry Daily, and the New York Review of Books, among others.

Richard Hoffman is the author of the memoirs Half the House and Love & Fury; the poetry collections, Without Paradise; Gold Star Road, winner of the 2006 Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize and the 2008 Sheila Motton Award from the New England Poetry Club; Emblem; Noon until Night, winner of the 2018 Massachusetts Book Award for Poetry. He is also author of the essay collection Remembering the Alchemists. A fiction writer as well, his Interference & Other Stories was published in 2009. A former Chair of PEN New England, he is Emeritus Writer in Residence at Emerson College.

Hany Massoud is the proud father of Ismael, Sofian, Zakariah, Qasim and Aminah and husband to Ayesha. He is the first US-born member of his family after his parents immigrated from Egypt. He has been with Democracy Now! since 2007 and has covered international stories such as the global climate catastrophe, the 2011 uprising in Egypt, the Gaza Flotilla, and the return of exiled presidents Aristide (Haiti) and Zelaya (Honduras). He received an Emmy for his work in the HBO documentary, In Tahrir Square: 18 Days of Egypt’s Unfinished Revolution. Locally, he has also been on the ground with the DN! team covering the Black Lives Matter movement, the fight for migrant rights at the US border, and the stripping of civil liberties spawned from the “War on Terror.” Prior to Democracy Now!, Hany was the Morning Chief Editor at KHOU/CBS in Houston and worked as International TV Bureau Liaison out of the United Nations. He develops programs that converge youth development, civic engagement and media literacy for an after school program he co-founded with his wife called Justice By the Pen.

Word Up – Poetry Reading: TRELLISES AND THORNS by Pamela L. Laskin

Tuesday, February 27, 2024 – 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Word Up Community Bookshop Librería Comunitaria
2113 Amsterdam Ave.
New YorkNY 10032

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Join us for a reading with Pamela L. Laskin for her latest poetry collection Trellises and Thorns (Dos Madres Press 2024).

This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket with 30 max attendees. Please register in advance. 

In compliance with Word Up Community Safety guidelines, all attendees for this event must wear a mask inside.

Word Up Community Bookshop is located at 2113 Amsterdam Ave. (& 165th St.) in Washington Heights, NYC. You can take the 1 train to 168th St and the A/C train to 163rd or 168th  St.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pamela L. Laskin is a lecturer in the English Department at City College, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate Children’s Writing, and directs the Poetry Outreach Center. Several of her children’s and poetry books have been published. RONIT AND JAMIL, A Palestinian/Israeli ROMEO AND JULIET in verse was published by Harper Collins in 2017, and was named among the 35 books to have on your radar for 2017. BEA, a picture book, was a finalist for the Katherine Paterson Prize for Children’s Fiction in 2018. She is the winner of the 2018 International Fiction Prize from Leapfrog Press, and WHY NO BHINE, an epistolary novel about the Rohingya Muslims, was published in 2019. The Operating System published a bilingual picture book, MONSTER MARIA, which is about Hurricane Maria, and is being used as a fundraiser for after-school programs in Puerto Rico. Linus Press published MY SECRET WISH about families seeking asylum, and is also being used as a fundraiser for Immigrant Families Together.


Word Up Recirculation: EXCELSIOR by bonafide rojas Book Party

Friday, February 9, 2024 – 7:00pm to 8:30pm
RECIRCULATION A project of Word Up
876 Riverside Drive (near 160th St.)
New YorkNY 10032

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Excelsior is the fifth collection of poetry from Bonafide Rojas. The poetry collection is a culminating moment celebrating the twentieth anniversary of Rojas’ first book Pelo Bueno, and the tenth anniversary of his third book Renovatio. Rojas will be reading from the new collection.

Excelsior & Notes On The Return To The Island will be for sale at the event.

This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket with 50 max attendees. Please register in advance. 

In compliance with Word Up Community Safety guidelines, all attendees are encouraged to stay masked at all time.

Recirculation, a project of Word Up Community Bookshop, is located at 876 Riverside Drive (near 160th St.) in Washington Heights, NYC. You can take the 1 train to 157th St., A/C train to 163rd St., and the M4 and M5 to Broadway and 159/160th.

ABOUT THE POET

Bonafide Rojas is the author of Notes On The Return To The IslandRenovatioWhen The City Sleeps & Pelo Bueno. He’s an Inaugural Fellow of Letras Boricuas & a BRIO award winner. An established Nuyorican Poet, he appeared on the fourth season of Def Poetry Jam & has been published in: Centro Journal Vol. XII, Winter 2000, Hostos Review #2, Bum Rush The Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Black Literature & Art, The Calabash Journal, The Acentos Review, Learn Then Burn Vol. I & II, The Palabras Journal, Me No Habla Con Acento!, Manteca! & Hafen Lesung 18, Chorus: The Literary Mixtape, The Lost Orphan Project, & was featured in the documentary Spitting Ink.

He’s the founder & co-songwriter of the band The Mona Passage, & has performed domestically & internationally at Lincoln Center, Philadelphia Museum Of Art, Brooklyn Museum, El Museo Del Barrio, Bowery Ballroom, Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, Reginald Lewis Museum, Rotterdam Arts Center, Spoken Word Paris, Konvent Zero Barcelona, Hafen Lesung Hamburg, Latinale Berlin, Festival Kerouac Vigo España & Festival De La Palabra. He’s an avid collector of pop culture & still only wears red socks.

Word Up: WHY POETRY MATTERS Reading

Tuesday, October 10, 2023 – 7:00pm
Word Up Community Bookshop Librería Comunitaria
2113 Amsterdam Avenue
New YorkNY 10032

Livestream via ZOOM (register for link)

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It’s often asked if poetry matters. Four women poets will read work that demonstrates why it does. Patricia BrodyElizabeth J. ColemanLucille Lang Day, and Alicia Ostriker will read work that helps light our way forward.

This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket with 30 max attendees along with a livestream. Please register in advance to attend in-person or virtually.

In compliance with Word Up Community Safety guidelines, all attendees for this event must wear a mask inside.

Word Up Community Bookshop is located at 2113 Amsterdam Ave. (& 165th St.) in Washington Heights, NYC. You can take the 1 train to 168th St and the A/C train to 163rd or 168th  St.

ABOUT THE POETS

Alicia Ostriker has published 19 collections of poetry, been twice nominated for the National Book Award, and has twice received the National Jewish Book Award for Poetry, among other honors.  As a critic she is the author of the now-classic Stealing the Language: the Emergence of Women’s Poetry in America. Her most recent collections of poems are Waiting for the Light and The Volcano and After: Selected and New Poems 2002-2019. She was New York State Poet Laureate (2018-2021) and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets (2015-2020). She lives with her husband on the Upper West Side.

Patricia Brody taught English and American Literature at Boricua College in Washington Heights. She became a Heights citizen in 2010 when she first walked through the door of the first Word Up bookstore! Patricia practiced family therapy in New York City for 30 years, while raising three children with her artist husband Tom Kostro. My Blazing World is Patricia’s second collection from Salmon Poetry. Her earlier books are Dangerous to Know (poems in the voices of forgotten women artists & writers) and American Desire, which won Finishing Line’s 2009 New Women’s Voices Award. Via Zoom, Patricia now teaches Seeking Your Voice: Women Writing Poetry & Memoir, a course that originated at Barnard College Center for Research on Women.

Lucille Lang Day is the author of four poetry chapbooks and seven full-length collections, most recently Birds of San Pancho and Other Poems of Place. She is also the editor of Poetry and Science: Writing Our Way to Discovery, coeditor of Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California and Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California, and author of two children’s books and a memoir. Her many honors include the Blue Light Poetry Prize, two PEN Oakland – Josephine Miles Literary Awards, the Joseph Henry Jackson Award, and eleven Pushcart nominations. She is the publisher of Scarlet Tanager Books. https://lucillelangday.com

Elizabeth J. Coleman is the editor of Here: Poems for the Planet (Copper Canyon Press, 2019), an international ecopoetry anthology with a forward from His Holiness the Dalai Lama and an activist guide from the Union of Concerned Scientists. She is the author of two poetry collections from Spuyten Duyvil Press (one, Proof, a University of Wisconsin Press prize finalist), and of four chapbooks. Her poems appear in numerous journals and anthologies, including the forthcoming Elemental Series (Humans and Nature Press). Elizabeth’s new collection was a finalist for the 2023 Cider Press and 2023 Marsh Hawk Press Prizes. For many years, she was a public interest attorney, and she currently teaches mindfulness. Her avocation is classical guitar. https://www.elizabethjcoleman.com