Hello everyone!
I want to share some of the exciting work I have been doing this year and work that will be coming soon!
First, I am currently leading an online workshop series called Ark|Teks, which looks at experimental poetics. The previous workshops have been “Finding the Self in Font,” “Reconstruction: A Speculative Revisioning of America,” “Celebration As Ritual,” and “Lorenzo Thomas’ ‘Aural Design,'” and the next one will be “Fractal Poetics & Glitch Language” featuring work from Ana-Maurine Lara and Alan Pelaez Lopez. It will livestream at this link on October 26 at 4pm. This series is supported in part by Queens Council on the Arts’ New Works Grant.
Next month’s workshop will be the last one and then in January, I will be partnering with a workshop group to continue to series as a four -week workshop. Stay tuned for details for it.
Second, I previously shared on my blog an online chapbook, which I called A File Ka. Well, I edited the poems and submitted it to a publisher, DoubleCross Press. So, I am happy to announce that the chapbook will be published in DoubleCross Press’ Do-Si-Do collection of chapbooks under the title Recycling a Why That Rules Over My Sacred Sight. The chapbook will be printed alongside Edwin Torres’ The Animal’s Perception of Earth.
Last, I was chosen to be a part of Jamaica Flux this year, which is a program in my community that supports artists to do community-based, research art projects. My project, Art/I/Fact, will be a series of time capsule image and poetry collages inspired by research into various spaces in Southeast Queens, NYC where I live. As spaces change due to gentrification, it’s important to remember the histories of the spaces in which we live. Starting next month, I will lead a 3-part workshop series using ekphrastic and erasure poetry and collage and assemblage to look at memory as a type of time capsule. I might develop this into more workshops if it is well-received.
Hopefully, I will see you at one of these workshops in the future!
Sherese Francis: Futuristically Ancient 