F181.
Radical Jewish American Labor Poetry: A Reading
Friday, March 25, 2022
12:10 pm to 1:25 pm
This reading explores new work in the tradition of Jewish labor poetry: writing at the nexus of radicalism, labor, and identity. In Jewish poetics, writing about labor spans our international, multilingual literature; emerging poets are (re)interpreting this inheritance in terms of its politics and imaginative possibilities. These poets—including writers from the Rust Belt—write about their work as taxi drivers, electricians, motel staff, retail grocers, and parents.
Participants
Allison Pitinii Davis is the author of Line Study of a Motel Clerk, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in Poetry and the Ohioana Book Award, and Poppy Seeds, winner of the Wick Poetry Chapbook Prize. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry 2016, POETS.org, and elsewhere.
Joshua Gottlieb-Miller received his PhD and MFA in creative writing from the University of Houston. Joshua has been a fellow at MacDowell as well as the Tent Writing Conference at the Yiddish Book Center. Now Joshua works the back desk at the Menil Collection, tutors writing, and teaches for Inprint at the Jewish Community Center.
Sean Singer is the author of Discography, winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America; Honey & Smoke; and Today in the Taxi.
Dan Alter’s poems and reviews have been published in journals including Field, Fourteen Hills, PANK, and ZYZZYVA; his first collection My Little Book of Exiles is forthcoming. He works as an IBEW electrician.
Joy Katz’s latest poetry collection is All You Do Is Perceive. Her work in progress, White: An Abstract, attempts to document American whiteness. A former NEA fellow, Katz collaborates in the activist art collective Ifyoureallyloveme. She teaches at Carlow University.
