National Sawdust+ Talk:
“Incident” by Amiri Baraka read by Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Visual Text include references & lines from
Allen Ginsberg’s “America”
Carrie Mae Weems’s “From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried”
Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”
Tickets
About this NS+ Talk
Two bold voices come together for a provocative National Sawdust+ conversation: Rachel Eliza Griffiths, whose brave, sobering, and lyrical work spans poetry, photography, and mixed media, and pioneering editor Chris Jackson, whose category-defying books have re-shaped the literary narrative at large. The intimate talk will span subjects such as beauty and resistance, and transforming politics and conflict into art.
Each is fueled by a passionate, courageous sensibility that has yielded narratives that challenge and move us, reflecting the world in which we live today – Griffiths’s current Poets House photography exhibition (American Stanzas: 2006-2016) that “marries lyrical and visual cartographies in which race, gender, sexuality, imagination, history, and language orbit each other.” The New York Times Magazine has credited Jackson with “building a black literary movement.” Now, at the helm of the newly-revived One World *imprint, he intends to “explore ideas that help to re-imagine our politics, culture, and interior lives, without the filter of dominant culture… captur[ing] the world in its fullness for this moment.”
Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a poet and visual artist. Her most recent collection of poetry, Lighting the Shadow (Four Way Books 2015), was a finalist for the 2015 Balcones Poetry Prize and the 2016 Phillis Wheatley Book Award in Poetry. Griffiths’ third collection of poetry, Mule & Pear (New Issues Poetry & Prose), was selected as the winner of the 2012 Inaugural Poetry Award by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Griffiths’ literary and visual work has appeared widely including The New York Times, LA Review of Books, Poets & Writers, American Poetry Review, Guernica, Transition, Lit Hub, The Rumpus, and many others. Her visual work has been exhibited nationally and is included in the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Currently, American Stanzas: 2006-2016, a showcase of photography and mixed media, is on exhibition at Poets House.
Chris Jackson
Chris Jackson is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of One World, a just re-launched imprint of Random House. Previously, Jackson was an Executive Editor at Spiegel & Grau from its founding in 2006, where he edited prize-winning and bestselling authors including Ta-Nehisi Coates, Bryan Stevenson, Eddie Huang, Jill Leovy, Matt Taibbi, Victor LaValle, and Jay Z. His forthcoming One World authors include Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, Alex Wagner, Quiara Hudes, Molly Crabapple, Marwan Hisham, and Binyavanga Wainaina. His own writing has appeared in TheAtlantic.com, The Paris Review, and Callaloo among other places. Jackson is a native of New York, where he currently resides.
Photos of Chris Jackson by Shaniqwa Jarvis
Other NS+ Events
National Sawdust+ presents Yo-Yo Ma + Maria Popova
May 18th, 2018 - 6:15pm doors • 7pm talk Yo-Yo Ma's generous spirit and expansive curiosity have led him far beyond music and the arts, fueling explorations into culture, society, and creativity. Maria Popova casts light on essential ideas across philosophy, science, poetry, and more on her indispensable website "Brain Pickings," an “online emporium of ideas” (The New York Times) that helps us deepen our understanding of the world and of ourselves. Now, National Sawdust+ presents these two extraordinary thinkers in a rare conversation.
NationalSawdust+ presents The Perception of Beauty
May 24th, 2018 - 6:30pm doors • 7:30pm show “National Sawdust+ presents the Lab of Misfits in a mind-expanding evening, The Perception of Beauty, conceived by neuroscientist Beau Lotto and musician Oded Lev-Ari. Join an evening of audience experiments, musical demonstrations, and conversation that reveal the invisible matrix that govern the way we experience sound, investigate notions of beauty, and explore imperfection.
NationalSawdust+ and London Review of Books present Regarding Whitney
June 13th, 2018 - 6:30pm doors • 7:30pm show In this special evening created by NationalSawdust+ and the London Review of Books, writers and musicians will reflect on Whitney Houston as artist, actress and icon, and help us consider her anew. Poet, critic, and melomaniac August Kleinzahler and musicians such as Du Yun and Shayna Dunkelman, Carl Hancock Rux, and Esperanza Spalding will share performances and readings inspired by Houston’s sweeping body of work.
