This Friday: Taylor Brady and Lasana Sekou on Empires!

Please join us for a reading with Taylor Brady and Lasana Sekou on Empires.

Friday February 26, 2010
7:30pm
Timken Hall/CCA Campus San Francisco
1111 8th Street
$8-15 entrance/members and students FREE


For over 35 years SPT has been at the heart of where experimentation and community intersect. This season we continue to present a multi-pronged conversation that highlights some of the concerns of our readers’ work. These conversations include: bodies, communities and empires. Dialogues are intended to engender discussions around the themes of bodies, communities, and empires, putting each reader's writing into broader contexts and ongoing debates around poetics, politics, and practice.

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Lasana M. Sekou is the author of 13 books of poetry, monologues, and short stories. He is a leading St. Martin writer and is considered as one of the prolific Caribbean poets of his generation. Reviewers have compared Sekou’s poetry to the works of a range of poetic giants, from Aimé Césaire to Oswald Mtshali, from Kamau Brathwaite to Dylan Thomas, from e.e. cummings to Linton Kwesi Johnson. However, writes literary critic Howard Fergus in his book Love Labor Liberation in Lasana Sekou, “The voice that reaches us is sui generis, unique and Sekouesque.” Sekou can be heard reciting his poetry to music on the The Salt Reaper Audio CD. His books, such as the critically reviewed The Salt Reaper – poems from the flats, along with 37 Poems, Nativity and monologues for today, and Brotherhood of the Spurs have been required reading at Caribbean and North American universities. He is the editor of National Symbols of St. Martin – A Primer and producer of Fête – The first recording of Traditional St. Martin festive music by Tanny & The Boys. Sekou’s poetry and reviews about his work have appeared in Callaloo, The Massachusetts Review, Del Caribe, De Gids, Das Gedicht, Prometeo, Revue Noire, World Literature Today, Caribbean Quarterly, Postcolonial Text, Caribbean Review of Books, Boundary 2, Harriet, The Jamaica Gleaner, The Daily Herald, Calabash and Repeating Islands. His poems have been translated into Spanish, Dutch, French, German, Turkish, and Chinese. A graduate of Stony Brook University (BA/Int’l. Relations) and Howard University (MA/Mass Communication), Sekou has presented papers and recited his poetry at cultural and literary conferences and festivals in the Caribbean, North and South America, Africa, Europe and Asia. Awards and honors include an International Writers Workshop Visiting Fellow, a James Michener Fellow, a knighthood (The Netherlands), Recognition for literary excellence in the service of Caribbean unity (Dominican Republic), Conscious Lyrics Artist of the Decade, and the CTO Award of Excellence. Lasana M. Sekou is an advocate for the independence of St. Martin, which is a colony of France and the Netherlands. The new edition of Nativity/Nativité/Natividad will appear in 2010 as the author’s first title published in English with French and Spanish translations in one volume.

Find work online by Lasana Sekou here.

Taylor Brady lives in San Francisco. He is the author of several books of poetry and prose, most recently Occupational Treatment (2006), and Yesterday's News (2005), and is the co-author with Rob Halpern of Snow Sensitive Skin (2007). Recent poems, beginning to accumulate under the title Pamphlets, Rants, Tracts & Ballads, attempt a series of extrapolations, re-readings, and polemics with and against the grain of the writers and musicians who instruct him. He is active in the Nonsite Collective, and has recently edited the collected essays of Will Alexander for 2010 publication.

Listen to him read with Rob Halpern here.