Poetry Night + Closing Reception for Mercury Retrograde
- 06/30/2021
- 7 pm PT
Event details
Pro Arts Oakland and Mizna are pleased to present a night of poetry and solidarity with Palestine, in conjunction with the closing evening of Zeina Barakeh’s exhibition Mercury Retrograde.
This in-person event takes place Wednesday, June 30 at 7pm at Pro Arts and features readings from Elmaz Abinader, Mena Kamel, Janine Mogannam, and Priscilla Wathington. The evening will be emceed by the esteemed Elmaz Abinader as well!
Where:
Pro Arts Gallery & COMMONS is a collectively held space in Oakland, California that blurs the line between art, debate, experimentation, and collaboration. Learn more.
ABOUT THE POETS
Mena Kamel is a writer and artist from the Mojave Desert. His work explores queer identity, sex, mainstream language, violence, and the notion of home. He’s the founding editor of Coptic Queer Stories, an online zine covering gender, sexuality, race, and religion that aims to record the experiences of Coptic LGBTQ+ individuals in the diaspora. His work attempts to challenge the status quo as it relates to customs, home, family, love, atheism, secularism, spiritual ritual, and folklore.
Elmaz Abinader most recent poetry collection, This House, My Bones, was The Editor’s Selection for 2014 from Willow Books/Aquarius. Her books include a memoir: Children of the Roojme, A Family’s Journey from Lebanon, a book of poetry, In the Country of My Dreams… which won the Oakland PEN, Josephine Miles Award. Elmaz is one of the co-founders of The Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA/Voices). She teaches at Mills College, and is an instructor at the Oakland Y.
Priscilla Wathington is a Palestinian American writer, editor, and human rights advocate. Her debut poetry chapbook, “Paper and Stick,” which scrutinizes Israel’s militarized attempts to constrict Palestinian bodies and breath, will be published this October by Tram Editions. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Michigan Quarterly Review, Salamander, Mizna, and The Normal School, among others.
Janine Mogannam is a Palestinian poet and librarian from San Francisco (occupied Ramaytush Ohlone land). She is a member of the Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI) and Still Here San Francisco, and an alum of the VONA and Interdisciplinary Writers’ Lab workshops. Her performances include the National Queer Arts Festival, Split This Rock poetry festival, and Litquake. Her work can be found in Kweli, The Still Here Anthology, Dismantle, and Writing the Walls Down, and is forthcoming in I Want Sky, a notebook celebrating Sarah Hegazy and queer SWANA life, published by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and Mizna.