Atelier Rosal—a gallery, performance venue, and frame shop at 74 E. Cherry St., Rahway, NJ —is very excited to invite you to a two-hour community workshop with poet Patrick Rosal, where you’ll have the opportunity to generate some of your own writing based on the work of Aracelis Girmay, W.S. Merwin, Pablo Neruda, and Willie Perdomo. All levels are invited to a limited number of seats in the workshop. 

If you would like to participate in the workshop, please RSVP to rosalwriting@gmail.com to reserve a space. We are happy to offer this workshop with a nationally known artist for a nominal sliding-scale fee—$5 to $25. (THE OPEN MIC AND READING AFTER THE WORKSHOP ARE FREE!)

After the workshop, Atelier Rosal will hold an open mic, and Willie Perdomo — nationally acclaimed author hailing from East Harlem (aka El Barrio), New York — will read from his new book, The Crazy Bunch. Poet, professor, and publisher Roberto Carlos Garcia will introduce Mr. Perdomo. His new poetry collection will be available for sale and signing.

Workshop begins promptly at 4:00 pm. Open mic and reading begin at 6:00 pm. Wine and cheese reception to follow.

Readings as part of the Art for Justice Project Patrick Rosal and Evie Shockley (March 21) will be presenting all new work that addresses issues of mass incarceration in the United States. 

The winner of the NBCC Award for Poetry offers up a spirited collection of short lyric essays, written daily over a tumultuous year, reminding us of the purpose and pleasure of praising, extolling, and celebrating ordinary wonders.

Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights is a genre-defying book of essays—some as short as a paragraph; some as long as five pages—that record the small joys that occurred in one year, from birthday to birthday, and that we often overlook in our busy lives. His is a meditation on delight that takes a clear-eyed view of the complexities, even the terrors, in his life, including living in America as a black man; the ecological and psychic violence of our consumer culture; the loss of those he loves. Among Gay’s funny, poetic, philosophical delights: the way Botan Rice Candy wrappers melt in your mouth, the volunteer crossing guard with a pronounced tremor whom he imagines as a kind of boat-woman escorting pedestrians across the River Styx, a friend’s unabashed use of air quotes, pickup basketball games, the silent nod of acknowledgment between black people. And more than any other subject, Gay celebrates the beauty of the natural world—his garden, the flowers in the sidewalk, the birds, the bees, the mushrooms, the trees.

This is not a book of how-to or inspiration, though it could be read that way. Fans of Roxane Gay, Maggie Nelson, and Kiese Laymon will revel in Gay’s voice, and his insights. The Book of Delights is about our connection to the world, to each other, and the rewards that come from a life closely observed. Gay’s pieces serve as a powerful and necessary reminder that we can, and should, stake out a space in our lives for delight. 

Wes Matthews, the new Philadelphia Youth Poet Laureate, is a Detroit-born, Philadelphia-based poet and essayist. He is a 2x Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam Festival competitor, a 2016 TEDxDetroit speaker, and winner of the 2018 Philly Slam League All-Star Slam. His work can be found in Detroit Free Press, Eunoia Review, Dreginald Magazine, and more. Wes forges his work with an imaginative eye on the darkness of cultural and historical landscapes, connecting them with personal ideals and forward-thinking hope.

Patrick Rosal is a poet, essayist, interdisciplinary artist, and musician/composer/arranger. He is the author of four books of poetry, most recently, Brooklyn Antediluvian, which won the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets and was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award. His writing has appeared in Best American Poetry, the New York Times, American Poetry Review, Grantland, and many other journals and anthologies. He has been a featured performer across four continents and at hundreds of venues and festivals throughout the United States. A recipient of residencies from Civitella Ranieri and the Lannan Foundation, he has been awarded fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fulbright Core Researcher Program. He currently teaches at Princeton University as Visiting Associate Professor and is a full-time associate professor of the MFA program at Rutgers University-Camden.

Yolanda Wisher is the author of Monk Eats an Afro (Hanging Loose Press, 2014) and the co-editor of Peace is a Haiku Song (Philadelphia Mural Arts, 2013). Wisher performs a unique blend of poetry and song with her band The Afroeaters, and her work has been featured in a variety of media including Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade, GOOD Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Contemporary Black Canvas, Radio Times, PoetryNOW, Ploughshares, and CBC Radio. A Pew Fellow & Hedgebrook Writer-in-Residence, Wisher was named the inaugural Poet Laureate of Montgomery County Pennsylvania in 1999 and the third Poet Laureate of Philadelphia in 2016. Wisher taught high school English for a decade, served as Director of Art Education for Philadelphia Mural Arts, and founded and directed the Germantown Poetry and Outbound Poetry Festivals. She has led workshops and curated events in partnership with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Free Library of Philadelphia, and U.S. Department of Arts & Culture. Wisher was the 2017-2018 CPCW Fellow in Poetics and Poetic Practice at the University of Pennsylvania, and she is currently the Curator of Spoken Word at Philadelphia Contemporary.

Cynthia Arrieu-King is associate professor of creative writing at Stockton University. Her books are People are Tiny in Paintings of China (Octopus Books 2010) and Manifest, winner of the Gatewood Prize chosen by Harryette Mullen (Switchback Books 2013). Her poems will appear this year in Poetry, TriQuarterly, and Crazyhorse.

Patrick Rosal is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Brooklyn Antediluvian, which was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award and winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets. Rosal’s other three books are Boneshepherds, My American Kundiman, a winner of the Association of Asian American Studies Book Award, and Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive, winner of the Asian American Writers Workshop Members’ Choice Award. His writing has appeared in Tin House, New England Review, Poetry, Best American Poetry, and many other journals and anthologies. He has been a featured performer internationally in Greece, South Africa, the UK and at hundreds of spaces in the Caribbean, South America, the Philippines, and the U.S. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the Fulbright Scholar Program. He is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Rutgers University-Camden where he directs the MFA Program.

Readings of Tom’s work by Billy Collins, Terrance Hayes, Edward Hirsch, Marie Howe, Mary Karr,Patrick Rosal, Vijay Seshadri, and Amber Rose Tamblyn. Introduced by Jeffrey McDaniel, and including a poem set to music by Joan as Policewoman (aka Joan Wasser)

Co-sponsored by Academy of American Poets, Poetry Society of America, Poets House, Sarah Lawrence College, Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, and the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center

free for anyone with blood coursing through their veins

The Philadelphia Premier of A Late Style of Fire, a documentary about the poet Larry Levis. Followed by a panel discussion on race, class, and literary communities featuring Jacob Winterstein, Kirwyn Sutherland, Cindy Arrieu-King and Patrick Rosal. 

This event is free and open to the public, must show an ID to get in the building

Entrance to the Bonnell Building is on 17th Street, on the east side of the street, just south of Spring Garden. The Bonnell Auditorium is on the ground floor and is wheelchair accessible.

This event is organized by Community College of Philadelphia's Diversity Council and is co-sponsored by Drop the Mic, CCP's Creative Writing program, Philalalia, and Thread Makes Blanket press. 

http://www.alatestyleoffire.com/