Tag Archives: Word Up Recirculation

Word Up Recirculation: BIPOC Open Mic Book Exchange

Open Mic Book Exchange is a collaborative afternoon of storytelling, poetry, and community.

Bring a book that means something to you or buy one at the shop when you arrive. We’ll open up the mic and everyone is invited to share a piece, whether it’s a poem or a song inspired by the book, or a story about the version of yourself who first found it, this is a space to reflect, create, and connect. After everyone shares we will exchange books with one another, so everyone leaves with a new story to read!

Please be sure to arrive early to give yourself ample time to shop if you aren’t coming with a book.

Word Up Recirculation: Author Emmaia Gelman

Word Up Recirculation welcomes Emmaia Gelman to celebrate the launch of her new book, The Anti-Defamation League and the Racial State (out 6/16/26), the first-ever history of the Anti-Defamation League and its determined, century-long alliance with Western empire.

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

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Emmaia Gelman is the founding Director of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism. She has taught social and cultural analysis at NYU and social sciences at Sarah Lawrence College. Her writing appears in Jewish Currents, Boston Review, The Forward, and elsewhere.

Word Up Recirculation: Gallery Opening — Elizaveta Kozlova’s ANTE PERPETUUM

Word Up celebrates the gallery opening of visual artist Elizaveta Kozlova’s show ANTE PERPETUUM. Join us for drinks, snacks, and a discussion with the artist.

The show will be up for the month of May at Recirculation, a project of Word Up.

Ante Perpetuum (Before Forever) is a series of images created by Elizaveta Kozlova in July 2022. The monochrome photographs decontextualize fragments of driftwood. Discovering the extensive amount of driftwood on the banks of the Hudson River inspired Elizaveta to capture the striking expressivity of its shape and texture that will soon be destroyed by time, wind and water.​​

Elizaveta Kozlova is a NYC-based art and portrait photographer whose work has been presented at the Louvre Fifth Annual Exposure Award in 2015. She has been employed nationally and internationally as a fashion and portrait photographer. She has worked for such organizations as The Metropolitan Opera and The New School in New York, Branksome Hall School and Aprilage Inc. in Toronto. Her art photography work involves an exploration of nature through the prism of chiaroscuro technique as seen in the open_in_newANTE PERPETUUM series.

This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket with 80 max attendees. Please register in advance.

Word Up Recirculation: Jacqueline Jiménez Polanco’s HONORING SAPPHO & SAPPHO EN SANTO DOMINGO

Word Up welcomes Jacqueline Jimenez Polanco to celebrate the launch of Honoring Sappho: A Lesbian Poetry book and Sappho en Santo Domingo: Un poemario lésbico.

This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket. 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 HONORING SAPPHO

This poetry book compiles original poems written by the author, Jacqueline Jiménez Polanco, and her personal creative expansion of several Sappho’s fragments. The book has been written to honor Sappho and express the author’s admiration for Sappho’s extraordinary life during which she nurtured a genuine lesbian romance with Atthis and built a diverse lesbian community with women she mentored to write and sing poetry for love, leisure, companionship, support, and visibility. This book is a tribute to Sappho’s rich and unique poetic work and a token of gratitude to the first and grand lesbian Muse in the history of humanity.

SOBRE SAPPHO EN SANTO DOMINGO

He conversado en sueños con Sappho. Ella me cuenta los desafíos de su relación con Atthis, sus proezas para verla y estar juntas, sus anhelos no realizados, las lágrimas derramadas y la alegría de vivir felices en Santo Domingo luego de tanto pesar. De esa conversación nace mi inspiración para este libro de poesía lésbica que escribo con gran emoción en honor a Sappho, la gran Musa lésbica de la historia de la humanidad. En este poemario, la lectora se deleitará con una prosa cotidiana de una estética excelsa sobre la isla caribeña, su gente, su arte, sus costumbres, el erotismo lésbico y una reflexión profunda sobre tradiciones que limitan el lesbianismo en su más auténtica expresión.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jacqueline Jiménez Polanco is Associate Professor of Sociology at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York (CUNY). She holds a Ph.D. in political science and sociology from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid with a concentration in political changes in contemporary democracies. Dr. Jiménez Polanco is the author of Los partidos políticos en la República Dominicana: Actividad electoral y desarrollo organizativo and Corrupción y cartelización de la política en la República Dominicana and co-editor of Dominican Politics in the Twenty First Century: Continuity and Change. She was granted a PSC-CUNY Award in 2023.

Word Up Recirculation: Seth Michelson’s HOPE ON THE BORDER with David C. Baluarte

Word Up welcomes award-winning professor Seth Michelson to discuss his new book Hope on the Border: Immigration, Incarceration, and the Power of Poetry, a humanizing story of immigration shown through the lens of undocumented, unaccompanied children and the poems they write. In conversation with Michelson will be David C. Baluarte, an immigration attorney and CUNY law professor.

“Heartfelt . . . a surprisingly uplifting call to reform an unjust system.” -Publishers Weekly

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 are encouraged to stay masked.

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 BOOK

In heart-wrenching prose, Seth Michelson faces the U.S. immigration crisis head on-by learning and sharing the stories of migrating people fleeing violence and poverty, and by leading workshops for minors held inside a maximum-security detention center. Highlighting the experiences of people desperate for safety, Michelson tirelessly fights for justice and their freedom. Guided through the powerful medium of poetry, the children share their pasts, struggles, hopes, and dreams. Among them, Carlitos, a 13-year-old boy who escaped a gang to try to make a safe and honest life on his own after his mother’s death, and Karla, a teenager whose family begged her to flee for safety after she was shot. Remarkably, they and other children from similar circumstances express themselves with honesty, passion, and optimism for a better future.

Michelson also introduces us to migrating people at the border, including a woman who was chased from her home amid violence, and a dedicated father who was arrested and beaten while searching for work to make a more secure life for his wife and daughter.

Whether relating experiences in a Mexican refugee camp or a U.S. immigration detention center, Michelson’s prose is brisk and gripping, offering hard-earned insights into ways we might create a better immigration system that treats all people with dignity.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Seth Michelson is an award-winning professor who has gained recognition from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Fulbright Foundation. He is the author of academic articles, book introductions, film and book reviews, and fourteen books of poetry and poetry in translation. His work has been published in English and Spanish in Argentina, Mexico, England, and Italy, among other countries. He currently teaches at Washington and Lee University in Virginia where he is the chair of Latin American and Caribbean Studies. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

David C. Baluarte (he/él) joined CUNY School of Law as the Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and a Professor of Law in January 2024. Baluarte is an advocate, teacher, and scholar in the areas of immigration, refugee and statelessness protection, and international human rights. He has written numerous journal articles, academic studies, human rights reports, and participated in various grant-funded projects and high-profile impact litigation initiatives in these areas.