(CANCELED) VS Live! at the Guggenheim: Poetic Freedom – live podcast recording

Join us for a VS Live event at the Guggenheim with VS co-hosts Ajanaé Dawkins and Brittany Rogers and special guests LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs and Arisa White. During this participatory gathering, you will have the chance to reflect on notions of care, freedom, and intimacy through group conversation, interactive games, and engaged listening. 

Poetic Freedom is part of the two-day gathering, Poetry Is Not a Luxury, organized by the Guggenheim’s Poet-in-Residence Ama Codjoe. Poetry Is Not a Luxury is grounded in the sentiment of Audre Lorde’s 1977 essay by the same name, and brings contemporary artists and poets together with museum audiences to explore poetry’s ability to invoke sensuality, caesura, and care.  

The VS podcast is a bi-weekly series where poets confront the ideas that move them. Hosted by poets Ajanaé Dawkins and Brittany Rogers, produced by Cin Pim/Ombie Productions, and presented by the Poetry Foundation. 

Free with RSVP. Registration is required. Please note that seating is limited and admittance is first-come, first served. Registration does not guarantee entry once capacity is reached. This in-person event will also be livestreamed.

We’ve reached in-person capacity for the event! Please join us for the livestream on our Youtube Channel.

This taping of VS is co-presented by the Poetry Foundation and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. 

Presented by the Guggenheim Poet-in-Residence in association with the Academy of American Poets. Made possible by Van Cleef & Arpels.

LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs is a writer and sound artist and the author of Village and TwERK . Diggs has presented and performed at California Institute of the Arts, El Museo del Barrio, the Museum of Modern Art, and Walker Art Center. She has also presented at festivals, including Explore the North Festival, Leeuwarden, the Netherlands; Hekayeh Festival, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; International Poetry Festival of Copenhagen, Denmark; Ocean Space, Venice, Italy; International Poetry Festival of Romania; Question of Will, Slovakia; Poesiefestival, Berlin, Germany; and the 2015 Venice Biennale. As an independent curator, artistic director, and producer, Diggs has presented events for BAMCafé, Black Rock Coalition, El Museo del Barrio, La Casita, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, and the David Rubenstein Atrium. Diggs has received a 2020 C.D. Wright Award for Poetry from the Foundation of Contemporary Art, a 2016 Whiting Award, and a 2015 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship as well as grants and fellowships from the Howard Foundation, Cave Canem, Creative Capital, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission, among others. She teaches at Brooklyn and Barnard College. 

Arisa White is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Colby College. She is the author of Who’s Your Daddy, co-editor of Home Is Where You Queer Your Heart, and co-author of Biddy Mason Speaks Up, the second book in the Fighting for Justice Series for young readers. She is a Cave Canem fellow and serves on the Community Advisory Board for Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Currently, in development with composer Jessica Jones, Arisa is working on Post Pardon: The Opera. arisawhite.com

Ajanaé Dawkins is a poet, a performer, and an educator. She has published work in The Rumpus, EcoTheo Review, The BreakBeat Poets: Black Girl Magic, and The Offing, among others. Her honors include a Tinderbox Poetry Editors Prize and a finalist placement for a Toi Derricotte & Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize from Cave Canem. Dawkins is the 2022 Duncanson artist-in-residence at the Taft Museum and a recipient of a fellowship from the Watering Hole and the Pink Door Writing Retreat. She is the theology editor for EcoTheo Review, a Blackburn Fellow as an MFA candidate at Randolph College, and an MDiv candidate at Methodist Theological School in Ohio. 

Brittany Rogers is a poet, mother, educator, and Detroiter. Rogers has work published or forthcoming in Mississippi Review, Vinyl Poetry and Prose, The Offing, Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, and Tinderbox Poetry. Her work has been anthologized in The BreakBeat Poets: Black Girl Magic and Best of the Net. Her honors include fellowships from VONA, the Watering Hole, Poetry Incubator, and Pink Door Writing Retreat. She is editor in chief for Muzzle Magazine and a MFA candidate and Blackburn Fellow at Randolph College.