Day: Saturday September 19th

Home can be a journey or a place, figurative or literal, an interior search of belonging, and a destination. Either way, the word – which we dare not let hold us hostage to any single definition – evokes in each of us, a sense of longing and becoming, of territory and consequence. Five poets take us on their singular journeys with a conversation on their new works, one-woman shows, poet-written essays, spoken word, and deliberate declarations of vulnerability and courage. Anchored by Philly-based poet Denice Frohman—a poet, performer, and former Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion who is currently touring her one-woman show, Esto No Tiene Nombre, centering the oral histories of Latina lesbian elders. Her work has appeared in The BreakBeat Poets: LatiNext, Nepantla: An Anthology for Queer Poets of Color, and more. Celebrated poet, essayist, scholar Chet’la Sebree, in her illuminating work Turn W(here): A Geography of Home, speaks to “perfecting the art of leaving’ and rearranging the definition of home, of who we belong to and where. Imani Perry calls it, “An intimate rendering of the life of a Black woman artist.” Poet Maui Smith’s work has appeared in Club Plum Literary Journal, The Oyster River Pages, Electric Literature, Equinox Journal, among others. Called a poet of abundance by Willie Perdomo, Emmy-award winner Noel Quiñones’ new work Orange, reads “like in-person, figurative epiphanies … a palette’s “thousands of unnamed colors” that cut to the white meat of truth.” Orange, where every page hums “with the music of what it means to be alive and brown and queer and brilliant in a world that too often forgets to see you whole …  the ache of moving toward a future full of rowdy song,” writes Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Educator, award-winning poet, digital storyteller, and moderator DuEwa Frazier is the editor of the Introduction to Afrofuturism: A Mixtape in Black Literature & Arts, and author of Goddess Under the Bridge: Poems, and more. Join us for this special CityLit Stage presentation with prized poets, where we allow ourselves to create dangerously: an enlightening conversation and poetry reading where we push back against the world’s forgetting.