Diana Arterian’s Agrippina the Younger
Saturday, June 14
Doors: 7PM
Reading: 7:30PM - sharp
at 2220 Arts+Archives
The Poetic Research Bureau hosts a book launch event for Diana Arterian’s latest poetry collection, Agrippina the Younger, from Northwestern University Press. There will also be art by Emily Joyce, readings from Chloe Garcia Roberts and Lisa Locascio Nighthawk, and a musical performance led by Ryan McWilliams.
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A poetic journey through the past of the Roman Empire, Agrippina looks toward the future. Agrippina the Younger follows one woman’s study of another, separated by thousands of miles and two millennia but bound by a shared sense of powerlessness. Agrippina was a daughter in a golden political family, destined for greatness—but she hungered for more power than women were allowed. Exhausted by the misogyny of the present, Diana Arterian reaches into the past to try to understand the patriarchal systems of today. In lyric verse and prose poems, she traces Agrippina’s rise, interrogating a life studded with intrigue, sex, murder, and manipulation. Arterian eagerly pursues Agrippina through texts, ruins, and films, exhuming the hidden details of the ancient noblewoman’s life. These poems consider the valences of patriarchy, power, and the archive to try to answer the question: How do we recover a woman erased by history?
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“Diana Arterian was my classmate. With Agrippina the Younger, with both its elegance and courage to embrace the history of our darkness—and with such aesthetic muscularity—I am learning from her still. By stepping toward, instead of running from, the ancient histories of women-hatred, Arterian somehow excavates these legacies with a language and lyricism that holds our horror and beauty in sublime balance. ‘She does not look away…’” — ROBIN COSTE LEWIS
“In exquisitely braided prose and verse, Diana Arterian gives us an enthralling study of the often maligned and more often overlooked Agrippina the Younger. Necessarily suspicious and critical of official narratives, Arterian dares to 'pluck the thread' of time-worn accounts passed down to us from patriarchy. In this stunningly lyrical book—rigorously researched and rigorously imagined—we hear history as lies but also lyre: an instrument, in Arterian’s hands, attentively tuned and pitch perfect with song.” — BRANDON SOM
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Diana Arterian is the author of Playing Monster :: Seiche and has twice been a finalist for the National Poetry Series. Her writing has appeared in BOMB, The Harvard Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, and elsewhere. A poetry editor for Noemi Press, Arterian writes "The Annotated Nightstand" column at Lit Hub. She lives in Los Angeles.
Chloe Garcia Roberts is a poet and translator from the Spanish and Chinese. She is the author of Fire Eater: A Translator's Theology, recently named a finalist for the CLMP Firecracker Award and a book of poetry, The Reveal (Noemi Press). Her work has appeared in such publications as the Yale Review, BOMB, Conjunctions, and the Kenyon Review. Collections of her translations of Li Shanyin have been published by New Directions and New York Review of Books. She is the recipient of an NEA fellowship for her forthcoming translation of the novel Carne de Dios by Mexican author Homero Aridjis (University of Arizona Press, 2025).
Lisa Locascio Nighthawk is the chair of the Antioch MFA in Creative Writing and the executive director of the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference. Her novel Open Me was published by Grove Atlantic in 2018. Her work appears in The New York Times, n+1, Tin House, Electric Literature, Literary Hub, and Alta Journal, among other publications, and she writes a newsletter called Not Knowing How (https://lisalocascionighthawk.beehiiv.com/)
Ryan McWilliams is a Los Angeles-based composer, performer, and educator. His music often reflects his scholarly work in Early Music and its relationship to the music-making of today. As a guitarist, Ryan is interested in the composition and performance practices of both Renaissance lute and acoustic steel-string guitar. He is currently an Adjunct Lecturer and DMA candidate in composition at the USC Thornton School of Music.
Emily Joyce’s work often explores hidden systems of nature, the built world, and the cosmos. Since 1999, her work has been included in numerous exhibitions at galleries and museums throughout the United States and in Europe, including the Hammer Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and elsewhere. She is represented by Inman Gallery in Houston, Texas.