Invitation to the Species

The conversation you’re about to hear, “The Positive Twist,” was held between Allison Cobb, Sarah Riggs and Jérémy Robert. Cobb starts by reading the preface to Plastic: An Autobiography, the book she published with Nightboat Books in 2021, where she describes plastic as the epitome of the Anthropocene, and its damages on a personal and global level. She elaborates on her relationship with genres and her environmental engagement. She talks about the togetherness of lived experiences when she documented her failure to communicate with the inhabitants Mossville, Louisiana, once dubbed “the most toxic town” in the United States. She walks us through the three stages of apology, the creative meanderings of fiction and imagination, as well as the joyous and sustainable strength that can stem from our understanding of the plastic tragedy, and how literature, in its own way, can fend off resentment and help locate the strength to take action.

The conversation you’re about to hear, “The Tenses of Cultural Differences,” was

held between Monica de la Torre, Youmna Chlala, Sarah Riggs, and Alisha

Mascarenhas in April 2021. 

Monica and Youmna interrogate the past to investigate complex present times and

simultaneous states of reality. They contemplate the future as a place of potential

rather than collapse. Together with Sarah and Alisha, they question the notion of

heritage and the limits of empathy. They wonder how equivalences and differences

rather than same-same structures – in translation, art, film, and among people – can

better address the pressures of the present.

In the conversation, you’ll hear Monica and Youmna read from their own works.

Monica will read an excerpt from Repetition Nineteen, published by Nightboat in

2020, as well as an unpublished poem, while Youmna will tell us more about The

Paper Camera, the book she published, in 2019, with Litmus Press.

The conversation you’re about to hear, “What kind of language are we left with” was held between Mirene Arsanios and Celina Su, and recorded in February 2021.

With Mirene and Celina, both “motherless mothers without mother tongues,” we discuss the lineages of their languages, liminal subjectivities and the impossibility of “we” in light of differentially distributed access to resources. Together we consider how our social relations are being rewritten and disrupted in a time of ongoing crisis and disaster. We talk about alternative economies, how zoom killed the classroom. We contend with loneliness and the limits of the nuclear family, and what it means to be part of an amorphous, and constantly changing collective.

Following our conversation, you’ll also hear readings by Mirene and Celina from their own work. From Mirene you’ll hear an excerpt from Notes on Mother Tongues, published with Ugly Duckling Presse in 2020, and “A Collage in Progress” by Celina, also published in 2020, and which can be found in full at thepoetryfoundation.org.

Punctuated by the sounds of tools, helicopters, and sirens in her Fort Greene garden, Lois Elaine Griffith discusses with Alisha Mascarenhas what it means to create, repair, and build community within and beyond the era of COVID-19. Lois considers the intersectionality of her father’s Caribbean-American influence on her life and the ways in which it has rippled throughout her experiences as a teacher, writer, and visual artist. As co-founder of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and founder of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Founders Archive Project, she notes the urgent need for spaces that encourage self-expression in the spirit of the Cafe’s original mission- “from the street to the stage.” She stresses the formation of communities supported by and for the people as an access point to accessibility and the use of art to inform living. In the context of our current state, she explores the role of the artist, the “community of presence” that can be created when we listen to the internal and “native ways” in meaningful transference. “We’re living in the break,” so what comes after? How do we heal? Lois’ hope is for us to pay more attention to the people and things around us, to exercise physically, and mentally, and to “understand whose shoulders we stand on.” She claims that within this process, we too can be carriers in order to give back what’s been given to us, as her father always told her. The interview ends with a poem “Climate and diversity as everything is alive” composed by Lois in the form of a letter to Alisha, who reads it aloud.

Punctuated by the sounds of tools, helicopters, and sirens in her Fort Greene garden, Lois Elaine Griffith discusses with Alisha Mascarenhas what it means to create, repair, and build community within and beyond the era of COVID-19. Lois considers the intersectionality of her father’s Caribbean-American influence on her life and the ways in which it has rippled throughout her experiences as a teacher, writer, and visual artist. As co-founder of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and founder of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Founders Archive Project, she notes the urgent need for spaces that encourage self-expression in the spirit of the Cafe’s original mission- “from the street to the stage.” She stresses the formation of communities supported by and for the people as an access point to accessibility and the use of art to inform living. In the context of our current state, she explores the role of the artist, the “community of presence” that can be created when we listen to the internal and “native ways” in meaningful transference. “We’re living in the break,” so what comes after? How do we heal? Lois’ hope is for us to pay more attention to the people and things around us, to exercise physically, and mentally, and to “understand whose shoulders we stand on.” She claims that within this process, we too can be carriers in order to give back what’s been given to us, as her father always told her. The interview ends with a poem “Climate and diversity as everything is alive” composed by Lois in the form of a letter to Alisha, who reads it aloud.

Punctuated by the sounds of tools, helicopters, and sirens in her Fort Greene garden, Lois Elaine Griffith discusses with Alisha Mascarenhas what it means to create, repair, and build community within and beyond the era of COVID-19. Lois considers the intersectionality of her father’s Caribbean-American influence on her life and the ways in which it has rippled throughout her experiences as a teacher, writer, and visual artist. As co-founder of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and founder of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Founders Archive Project, she notes the urgent need for spaces that encourage self-expression in the spirit of the Cafe’s original mission- “from the street to the stage.” She stresses the formation of communities supported by and for the people as an access point to accessibility and the use of art to inform living. In the context of our current state, she explores the role of the artist, the “community of presence” that can be created when we listen to the internal and “native ways” in meaningful transference. “We’re living in the break,” so what comes after? How do we heal? Lois’ hope is for us to pay more attention to the people and things around us, to exercise physically, and mentally, and to “understand whose shoulders we stand on.” She claims that within this process, we too can be carriers in order to give back what’s been given to us, as her father always told her. The interview ends with a poem “Climate and diversity as everything is alive” composed by Lois in the form of a letter to Alisha, who reads it aloud.

Punctuated by the sounds of tools, helicopters, and sirens in her Fort Greene garden, Lois Elaine Griffith discusses with Alisha Mascarenhas what it means to create, repair, and build community within and beyond the era of COVID-19. Lois considers the intersectionality of her father’s Caribbean-American influence on her life and the ways in which it has rippled throughout her experiences as a teacher, writer, and visual artist. As co-founder of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and founder of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Founders Archive Project, she notes the urgent need for spaces that encourage self-expression in the spirit of the Cafe’s original mission- “from the street to the stage.” She stresses the formation of communities supported by and for the people as an access point to accessibility and the use of art to inform living. In the context of our current state, she explores the role of the artist, the “community of presence” that can be created when we listen to the internal and “native ways” in meaningful transference. “We’re living in the break,” so what comes after? How do we heal? Lois’ hope is for us to pay more attention to the people and things around us, to exercise physically, and mentally, and to “understand whose shoulders we stand on.” She claims that within this process, we too can be carriers in order to give back what’s been given to us, as her father always told her. The interview ends with a poem “Climate and diversity as everything is alive” composed by Lois in the form of a letter to Alisha, who reads it aloud.

Sarah Riggs and Alia Al-Sabi invite Safaa Fathy to discuss displacement, language, feminism, revolution, and ecosystems in this generous talk hosted by Earth Arts Justice. Poet, filmmaker and philosopher Safaa Fathy was born in the south of Egypt where the sand, the water, and the green fields inspired her to write her first poem, and where her uncle’s library and the restrictive atmosphere of her village created formative experiences for her. She describes how far she had to go in her travels as she came to understand her relationship to language through exile, while navigating institutional and outright racism in France. She shares her thoughts on the 2011 uprising in Egypt, as well as the current intersections of climate activism and the revolutions of Black, indigenous and people of color. She lifts up the young people of the world who are asking the questions her generation never asked.

Sarah Riggs and Alia Al-Sabi invite Safaa Fathy to discuss displacement, language, feminism, revolution, and ecosystems in this generous talk hosted by Earth Arts Justice. Poet, filmmaker and philosopher Safaa Fathy was born in the south of Egypt where the sand, the water, and the green fields inspired her to write her first poem, and where her uncle’s library and the restrictive atmosphere of her village created formative experiences for her. She describes how far she had to go in her travels as she came to understand her relationship to language through exile, while navigating institutional and outright racism in France. She shares her thoughts on the 2011 uprising in Egypt, as well as the current intersections of climate activism and the revolutions of Black, indigenous and people of color. She lifts up the young people of the world who are asking the questions her generation never asked.

Sarah Riggs and Alia Al-Sabi invite Safaa Fathy to discuss displacement, language, feminism, revolution, and ecosystems in this generous talk hosted by Earth Arts Justice. Poet, filmmaker and philosopher Safaa Fathy was born in the south of Egypt where the sand, the water, and the green fields inspired her to write her first poem, and where her uncle’s library and the restrictive atmosphere of her village created formative experiences for her. She describes how far she had to go in her travels as she came to understand her relationship to language through exile, while navigating institutional and outright racism in France. She shares her thoughts on the 2011 uprising in Egypt, as well as the current intersections of climate activism and the revolutions of Black, indigenous and people of color. She lifts up the young people of the world who are asking the questions her generation never asked.