Join us for a poetry night featuring Thea Matthews, and with guests MK Chavez, Natasha Dennerstein, and Tongo Eisen-Martin.

Tongo will kick off the event, followed by a celebration of Thea Matthews' new collection with recitations and conversations.

Join via Zoom or FB Live:

Zoom:

Please click the link to join the webinar: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86947580149?pwd=WU5GK1Nja05UQmFKZDNjcXZKczd0QT09

Webinar ID: 869 4758 0149

Passcode: 083804

Or Telephone:

US: +1 669 900 6833

or +1 346 248 7799

FB Live: https://www.facebook.com/480Primrose/live/

Unearth [The Flowers] by Thea Matthews (Red Light Lit Press, 2020)

An electrifying letter to family, country, and self, Unearth [The Flowers] is an essential collection, relentless in its journey through stages of grief and healing while celebrating life. Each poem is an anthem for resiliency, a testament to survival, a triumph over the stigmatized terror that pervades the everyday. Thea Matthews’s first full-length collection of poetry details a mind, body, and flower at the intersection of the personal and the political.

“Unearth [The Flowers] is a blooming battle cry, a feat of alchemy in which the personal and political merge in a brutal empathy. Rage and sorrow and the liberation of healing unfurl in a landscape of flowers—this is true literary witchcraft.”

— MICHELLE TEA, author of Against Memoir

Featuring:

Born and raised in San Francisco, CA, Thea Matthews is a poet, scholar, and activist. She writes on the complexities of humanity, grief, and resiliency. She earned her BA at UC Berkeley where she studied and taught June Jordan's program Poetry for the People. She has work published in the Atlanta Review, Tilde, Foglifter, The Rumpus, and others. She has work also featured in anthologies Still Here San Francisco (Foglifter Press 2019); and Love WITH Accountability: Uprooting the Roots on Child Sexual Abuse (AK Press 2019). Her first collection of poetry Unearth [The Flowers] will be published by Red Light Lit Press, spring 2020. theamatthews.com

with:

MK Chavez is the award-winning author of Mothermorphosis, Dear Animal, and Virgin Eyes. She has received fellowships from Hedgebrook, CantoMundo, Squaw Valley Writers Workshop, VONA, the Napa Valley Writers Workshop, and others. She is co-founder/curator of the reading series Lyrics & Dirges and co-director of the Berkeley Poetry Festival. She has been a visiting instructor at Stanford University, San Francisco State University, Mills College, Berkeley City College, San Francisco City College, BAMPFA, and Hedgebrook. She is the recipient of an Alameda County Arts Leadership Award and the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award. Her most recent publications can be found in bags of coffee from Nomadic Coffee and on the Academy of American Poets website’s Poem-A-Day series. mariakaylibchavez.org

Natasha Dennerstein was born in Melbourne, Australia, to a family originating in Belarus. She worked as a psychiatric nurse for many years, which gave her an interesting perspective on the human condition. She has an MFA from San Francisco State University. She is the author of the poetry collections, Anatomize and Triptych Caliform. Natasha is currently on the editorial team of Nomadic Press in Oakland. She is a good copy-editor and takes editing assignments for manuscripts, theses, press releases and anything. natashadennerstein.com\

Tongo Eisen-Martin was born in San Francisco, California, and received an MA from Columbia University. He is the author of Someone's Dead Already (Bootstrap Press, 2015), which was nominated for a California Book Award, and Heaven Is All Goodbyes (City Lights Publishers, 2017), which received the California Book Award and an American Book Award. A poet, movement worker, and educator, his latest curriculum on extrajudicial killing of Black people, We Charge Genocide Again, has been used as an educational and organizing tool throughout the country. https://poets.org/poet/tongo-eisen-martin