t’al freedom ford, Nicole Wallace, Yva Las Vegass, Tanya Zamirouskaya
Poetry and other works curated by Mel Elberg
Microscope is very excited to present as its first event of 2018 a night of poetry and other works by New York-based poets, poet/musicians and writers t’al freedom ford, Nicole Wallace, Yva Las Vegass, and Tanya Zamirouskaya, curated by poet and independent curator Mel Elberg.
From the curator:
"When language is suppressed, when it is banned, shamed or killed off -- where does it go?
In private, what propels it? What germinates from pieces and wreakage?
What makes one language safe, another dangerous?
You are invited to a night of time travel through the work of four poets critically engaged with notions of dialect, vernacular, and the languages behind and beyond."
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t’ai freedom ford is a New York City high school English teacher and Cave Canem Fellow. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Drunken Boat, Sinister Wisdom, The African American Review, Vinyl, Gulf Coast, Tin House, Poetry and others. Her work has also been featured in several anthologies including The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop. Winner of the 2015 To the Lighthouse Poetry Prize, her first poetry collection, how to get over is available from Red Hen Press. t’ai lives and loves in Brooklyn, but hangs out digitally at:howtogetover.com.
Nicole Wallace is a poet, musician, and student of Anishinaabemowin. She is the Managing Director of The Poetry Project, the author of two chapbooks -- WHITE FLOWERS and chanson de animaux: equinox -- and is currently at work on a third manuscript, WAASAMOWIN. She is from Gakaabikaang, a place located in what is now called Minnesota, and a descendent of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa.
Yva Las Vegass is a Venezuelan born singer who came of age in Seattle, Washington where she lived for 25 years after immigrating to the USA. She was profoundly influenced by punk in the 80's and later was part in the (awful) grunge scene of the 1990's with her band Sweet 75 who she formed with Kris Novoselic. While influenced by different musical genres and social scenes Yva has continued over the years to celebrate her roots an cultivate the traditional folkloric Venezuelan music of her childhood. Her 2015 album, "I was born in a place of sunshine and the smell of ripe mangoes" infuses Venezuela folk tradition and a punk aesthetic. These days she is a happy New Yorker, living in her very queer household with her dog Moonie and her cat Damiana.
Tanya Zamirouskaya was born in Belarus. She writes surreal short stories about memory, ghosts, alienation and language deprivation. Her literary works have been published in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, where shoe worked as a journalist and music critic. She is the author of two short stories collections, Life Without Noise and Pain (2010, Moscow, AST Publishing House) and Sparrow River (2015, Moscow, AST Publishing House). She is currently attempting to write in English in order to study the effects of the language insufficiency on memory, narration, and representation. In 2017 Tanya finished her MFA in writing at Bard College. She lives in New York City.
Mel Elberg is a queer poet and independent curator writing and fighting in Brooklyn. She is interested in the effects of writing on our experience of time.