WORD presents Jersey City Reads Poems

04/21/2022 - 7:00pm

Come celebrate National Poetry Month with WORD Bookstores and the debut series, Jersey City Reads Poems, with readings by a stellar group of local JC poets, hosted by Sara Bella Munjack!

 

FREE EVENT! Seating is limited.  

EVENT AT CAPACITY; RSVPs CLOSED

Your name, address and phone number will be collected for contact tracing purposes. Do not attend the event if you are feeling ill. Location and time subject to change.

We will be requiring proof of vaccination and ID to attend this event. Acceptable proof includes:

Excelsior Pass

CDC Vaccination Card (or photo)

NYC Vaccination Record

An official immunization record from outside NYC or the U.S

 About the Poets

José Olivarez is the son of Mexican immigrants. His debut book of poems, Citizen Illegal, was a finalist for the PEN/ Jean Stein Award and a winner of the 2018 Chicago Review of Books Poetry Prize. It was named a top book of 2018 by The Adroit Journal, NPR, and the New York Public Library. Along with Felicia Chavez and Willie Perdomo, he co-edited the poetry anthology, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT.
 
Ben Purkert is the author of For the Love of Endings. His poems appear in The New Yorker, Poetry, Ploughshares, The Nation, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. The editor of Guernica's Back Draft interview series, he teaches creative writing at Rutgers. You can find him on Twitter @BenPurkert. 
 
Cortney Lamar Charleston is the author of Telepathologies (Saturnalia Books, 2017) and Doppelgangbanger (Haymarket Books, 2021). He was awarded a 2017 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and he has also received fellowships from Cave Canem and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Winner of a Pushcart Prize, his poems have appeared in POETRY, The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon
Review, Granta, The Nation and elsewhere. He serves as a poetry editor at The Rumpus and on the editorial board at Alice James Books.
 

About the Host

Sara Munjack holds an MFA from Rutgers-Newark and currently works at Four Way Books. Her poems appear in Cosmonauts Avenue, Pigeon PagesBOAAT, Gandy DancerISO Magazine, tele-art mag, The Common and forthcoming in Grist Journal. You can find her at sarabellamunjack.com.

 

Click here to attend virtually via Crowdcast

Citizen Illegal By José Olivarez Cover Image
$16.00
ISBN: 9781608469543
Availability: In stock at Brooklyn or Jersey City -- click for more details
Published: Haymarket Books - September 4th, 2018

"Citizen Illegal is right on time, bringing both empathy and searing critique to the fore as a nation debates the very humanity of the people who built it." --Eve Ewing, author of Electric Arches


The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: Latinext By Felicia Chavez (Editor), José Olivarez (Editor), Willie Perdomo (Editor) Cover Image
By Felicia Chavez (Editor), José Olivarez (Editor), Willie Perdomo (Editor)
$19.95
ISBN: 9781642591293
Availability: Available from our distributor; usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Haymarket Books - April 7th, 2020

In the dynamic tradition of the BreakBeat Poets anthology, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext celebrates the embodied narratives of Latinidad. Poets speak from an array of nationalities, genders, sexualities, races, and writing styles, staking a claim to our cultural and civic space. Like Hip-Hop, we honor what was, what is, and what's next.


For the Love of Endings (Stahlecker Selections) By Ben Purkert Cover Image
$15.95
ISBN: 9781945588051
Availability: Available from our distributor; usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Four Way Books - March 6th, 2018

How does it feel to lose your planet, your lover, yourself? Ben Purkert’s debut collection, For the Love of Endings, tests what connects us to this earth and to each other.


Doppelgangbanger By Cortney Lamar Charleston Cover Image
$16.00
ISBN: 9781642592658
Availability: Available from our distributor; usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Haymarket Books - February 9th, 2021

In his anticipated second poetry collection, Doppelgangbanger, Cortney Lamar Charleston examines the performance of Black masculinity in the U.S., and its relationship to family, love and community.