Saida Agostini's “let the dead in” Featured in Ms. Magazine
Saida Agostini's debut collection of poems receives a glowing recommendation from Ms. Magazine in three words: "Mythology, ancestry, triumph."
Popular American feminist megazine, Ms. Magazine, shouts out Saida Agostini's much raved about new collection of poems in a listicle posted on April 20th entitled "Poetry for the Rest of Us 2022." With three words, "Mythology, Ancestry, Triumph" Ms. places Agostini's let the dead in among recent poetry standouts like Salmas Sharif's Customs and Aurielle Marie's Gumbo Ya Ya. Ms. Magazine has a long history of supporting female-identifying artists and the editor's whole-hearted support for Agostini's latest is welcome and merited.
Saida Agostini’s first full-length poetry collection, let the dead in, is an exploration of the mythologies that seek to subjugate Black bodies, and the counter-stories that reject such subjugation. Audacious, sensual, and grieving, this work explores how Black women harness the fantastic to craft their own road to freedom. A journey across Guyana, London, and the United States, it is a meditation on black womanhood, queerness, the legacy of colonization, and pleasure. These poems craft a creation story fat with love, queerness, mermaids, and blackness.
Read a poem from let the dead in Here, watch her discuss ltdi Here, and order your copy Here
Talking Jazz and Rock with Poet Reuben Jackson (Laura Ritchie)
Author and music educator Lauren Ritchie sat down with ASP’s Reuben Jackson this week to talk jazz with the man himself. Reuben’s music credentials are long and impressive, from curating the Duke Ellington Collection at the Smithsonian to hosting a weekly Jazz radio show for NPR Vermont, to his poetry which takes inspiration from and frequently comments on the American Jazz idiom. Listen to or read the interview…
Rose Solari talks with Acclaimed Poet David Gewanter
This Sunday, October 21, at 8 p.m., ASP’s Rose Solari is reading with acclaimed poet, essayist, editor, and professor David Gewanter in a new poetry reading series at Second Story Books, 2000 P Street NW, Washington DC. In preparation for their reading, Rose talked with David about his work, particularly his most recent collection, Fort Necessity. Here is a part of their discussion…
Featured Audio: “Margaret in Oxford,” a Reading by Rose Solari
Robert Olen Butler loved Rose’s debut work of fiction for its sense of the eternity. This is one of many reasons why all of Rose Solari’s work must be treasured. It plays on life motifs, flips, forms, and languors upon the archetypes formed of human experience. We have spoken previously of Rose’s reverence for the myth in modern day. We even looked before at A Secret Woman’s sense of itself as being both poem and novel…