Kelsey Street Press 50th Anniversary: Kiran Bath, Jennifer Perrine, Rena Rosenwasser, and Metta Sáma
Kelsey Street Press, a small press with an explosive history of publishing radical queer and trans BIPOC and women authors, celebrates its 50th anniversary. Publishing experimental feminist poetics since 1974, Kelsey Street Press has been pivotal in addressing gender disparity in publishing. Their formidable lineage includes Etel Adnan, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Renee Gladman, Fanny Howe, Erica Hunt, Bhanu Kapil, Myung Mi Kim, Camille Roy, and Cecilia Viçuna.
Four poets with recent or forthcoming publications from Kelsey Street Press will read at this event. Kiran Bath is the author of Instructions for Banno (2024), a debut collection which moves through ritual, ruptured diary, field notes, and family genealogy to grapple with the inherited trauma of becoming a South Asian bride (banno). Jennifer (JP) Perrine is the winner of Kelsey Street Press’s 2023 QTBIPOC Prize for Beautiful Outlaw (forthcoming in 2025). Rena Rosenwasser, a co-founder of the press, has four poetry collections published by the press across four decades: Elevators (2011), Isle (1992), Simulacra (1986), and Desert Flats (1979). Metta Sáma is the author of Swing at your own risk (2019), a formally inventive and incisive critique of anti-blackness in the US empire.
Reading 6-7:15 PM
Reception with open bar 7:15-8:30 PM
Murmurs from the poet:
this land is my land this land is her land
from the Mexican border to the New England
shoreland this land is Not your land this body is
Not your body this tongue is Not your tongue this
language will cut you will peel back the
any answer arrives through the mouth of an
This program is part of the Poetry Foundation’s fall 2024 season, Murmuring Americas. All Poetry Foundation events are completely free of charge and open to the public, though advanced registration is encouraged. The performance space is ADA-compliant and wheelchair-accessible, and the program will feature CART captioning and ASL interpretation. For more information about accessibility at the Poetry Foundation, please visit our Accessibility Guide.