Join the Transnational Literature Series at Brookline Booksmith for an in-store event with poets Sylvie Kandé and Danielle Legros Georges to discuss and celebrate their work, including their new collections The Neverending Quest for the Other Shore and Island Heart, among others.

Sylvie Kandé’s neo-epic in three cantos, The Neverending Quest for the Other Shore, is a double narrative combining today’s tales of African migration to Europe on the one hand, with the legend of Abubakar II, on the other: Abubakar, emperor of 14th-Century Mali, sailed West toward the new world, never to return. Kandé’s language deftly weaves a dialogue between these two narratives and between the epic traditions of the globe. Dazzling in its scope, the poem swings between epic stylization, griot storytelling, and colloquial banter, capturing an astonishing range of human experience. Kandé makes of the migrant a new hero, a future hero whose destiny has not yet taken shape, whose stories are still waiting to be told in their fullness and grandeur: the neverending quest has only just begun.

Sylvie Kandé is the author of three collections of poetry published by Gallimard. Lagon, lagunes. Tableau de Mémoire (2000) was postfaced by Edouard Glissant, while La quête infinie de l’autre rive : épopée en trois chants (2011), short-listed for the Prix Mahogany and the Prix des Découvreurs, received the 2017 Prix Lucienne Gracia-Vincent. It is now published in German by Matthes & Seitz, and in English in 2022 as The Neverending Quest for the Other Shore: An Epic in Three Cantos, translated by Alexander Dickow, and published by Wesleyan University Press. Gestuaire (2016), short-listed for the Prix Ethiophile and the Prix Kowalski des lycéens, received the 2017 Prix Louise Labé. It will soon be anthologized in a German/French edition. As an historian, she specializes in the complex conversations between Africa and Europe, Africa and its Diasporas, notably the issue of métissage/ hybridity. She is the 2022 recipient of the Tyler Stovall Mission Prize granted by the Western Society for French History. A member of PEN America and the association of the Lycée Louis-le-grand alumni, she teaches at SUNY Old Westbury in the History & Philosophy Department.

Ida Faubert is a 20th-century Haitian-French poet considered a Caribbean—and especially Haitian—literary foremother.  Island Heart, the first English-language volume of Faubert’s, in a stunning translation by Danielle Legros Georges, makes her work more widely accessible to students, scholars, and readers of Latin-American, African-diasporic, Caribbean, and Haitian letters; and more generally available to readers of poetry and the poetry of women. Born in Port-au-Prince and reared in Paris, Faubert neither easily fit socially-prescribed categories for women of color in France or Haiti, nor conformed to them—living and burning through France’s Belle Époque, world wars, and Haiti’s Indigenist revolt in art. Bicultural, biracial, privileged, and complex, Faubert was a deft writer and socialite who promoted and participated in the movements of Haitian writers and literature in Haiti and France. While her work is garnering growing critical attention, she is seen as one of Haiti’s great women poets.

Danielle Legros Georges is a creative and critical writer, translator, and academic whose work sits in the fields of contemporary U.S. poetry, Black and African-diasporic poetry and literature, Caribbean/Latin American and Haitian studies, and literary translation. She is the author of several books of poetry The Dear Remote Nearness of You (2016)and Island Heart (2021) translations of the poems of 20th-century Haitian-French poet Ida Faubert. Her poems have been widely published, anthologized, and included in artistic commissions and collaborations. Legros Georges is the former Poet Laureate of Boston; the creative editor of sx salon, a digital forum for explorations of Caribbean literature; and a professor of creative writing at Lesley University.

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The evening’s featured poets are Jennifer Barber, Fred Marchant, Danielle Legros Georges and George Kalogeris.

Register for the event!

RSVP to let us know you’re coming! RSVPs don’t guarantee a seat, but you’ll be alerted to important details about the program, including safety requirements, cancellations, and book signing updates.

Books will be available for purchase at the event.
Jennifer Barber is Brookline’s current poet laureate, and co-editor with Jessica Greenbaum and Fred Marchant of Tree Lines: 21st century American poems, forthcoming from Grayson Books in 2022. Her poetry collection The Sliding Boats Our Bodies Made will be available in 2022 from The Word Works.

Danielle Legros Georges’ The Dear Remote Nearness of You was published in 2016 by Barrow Street Press; and her Island Heart, translations of the poems of Ida Faubert, published in 2021 by Subpress Books. The former Boston Poet Laureate, she teaches at Lesley University.

George Kalogeris‘s most recent book of poems is Winthropos (Louisiana State University Press, 2021) and his previous collection, Guide to Greece, was also published by Louisiana State University Press. Kalogeris teaches literature and classics in translation at Suffolk University in Boston.

Fred Marchant is the author of five books of poetry, the most recent of which is Said Not Said (Graywolf). He is also the editor of Another World Instead: The Early Poems of William Stafford (Graywolf), and the founding director of the Suffolk University Poetry Center in Boston.

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Have you ever dreamed of getting your MFA in creative writing? Here’s your chance to ask all your burning questions about what’s involved. During this informal discussion session, Lesley faculty will engage participants and offer their experiences and viewpoints on the low-residency MFA program model for those curious about or interested in applying to a creative writing master’s degree. Topics will include: how to choose the best writing program for you, the difference between low-residency and customary programs, the format of a low-residency program, profiles of students who choose low-residency programs, diversity in writing culture, and writing programs, and faculty mentorship. Come with your questions for program director Danielle Legros Georges, associate director Janet Pocorobba, and MFA alum Heather Hughes during this informative and practical session.

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Our annual Saturday evening celebration of poetry might be BYOB (again) this year, but it still promises to be the literary gathering of the weekend, as we bring together a talented group of poets to share their latest work in a casual, free-flowing setting. Poets Sam Cha (The Yellow Book), Anthony Febo (Becoming an Island), Rebecca Morgan Frank (Oh You Robot Saints!), Danielle Legros Georges (Letters from Congo) and Bianca Stone (The Möbius Strip Club of Grief, What Is Otherwise Infinite). Join us and the co-sponsors of this event, Mass Poetry, to raise a glass or two with other poetry lovers at what’s become a BBF Saturday tradition, this time emceed by Mass Poetry’s new program director, Danielle Jones.

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Amherst Books is the preferred book seller for the Phosphorescence Poetry Reading Series.

Phosphorescence Lineup 2021

About this month’s poets:

Somrita Ganguly is an Indian professor, and award-winning poet and literary translator. She was a Fulbright Doctoral Research Fellow at Brown University, USA, and is an alumna of the University of East Anglia’s International Literary Translation and Creative Writing Summer School. Somrita is serving as a judge for the 2021 PEN America Translation Prize, and is currently Head of the Department of English, Maharaja Manindra Chandra College, University of Calcutta. Her work has been showcased at the London Book Fair, and she has read in cities like Bloomington, Bombay, Boston, Calcutta, Cove, Delhi, Hyderabad, London, Miami, Providence, and Singapore. Somrita is the editor of the first anthology of food poems, Quesadilla and Other Adventures (2019), and has translated Firesongs (2019), Shakuni: Master of the Game (2019), and The Midnight Sun: Love Lyrics and Farewell Songs (2018), among other works.
somritaurniganguly.wordpress.com

Danielle Legros Georges is a writer, translator, academic, and author of several books of poetry including The Dear Remote Nearness of You, winner of the New England Poetry Club’s Sheila Margaret Motten book prize. She is a professor in and director of the Lesley University MFA program in Creative Writing, and taught in the Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Social Consequences Writer’s Workshop, at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her awards include fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Boston Foundation, and the Black Metropolis Research Consortium. She was appointed the second Poet Laureate of the city of Boston, serving in the role from 2015 to 2019, and collaborating with literary and visual artists, museums and galleries. The Massachusetts Artists Leaders Coalition recognized her civic work with a Champion of Artists Award in 2017. She is the editor of City of Notions: An Anthology of Contemporary Boston Poems. Her most recent work is a book of translations from the French, Island Heart: The Poems of Ida Faubert, published by Subpress Collective in 2021.
daniellelegrosgeorges.com

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