imogen smith’s “raw & zero”
Wednesday, May 6
Doors: 7pm
Reading: 7:30pm
at 2220 Arts+Archives
The Poetic Research Bureau presents the Los Angeles launch of raw & zero by imogen smith, published by Nightboat. With additional readers Misha Crafts, Alma Valdez-Garcia, Miguel Gutiérrez and Gabrielle Civil.
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Occupied with trans spirituality, the genocide in Palestine, and the manifold intricacies of queer love and struggle, the poems in imogen smith’s second collection, raw & zero, open up an unabashedly musical incitement. At the heart of this collection lies the tensions between the philosophical and the erotic. Language unspools throughout long form pieces influenced by concrete poetry, as the poet plays with a sense of shape, space, and symbols. With raw & zero, smith charts medical transition, a budding Islamic practice, and civic resistance, felt in the book’s themes of meaning-making, hope, love, lust, identity, and community alongside personal, regional, and global grief.
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imogen smith is a poet and transsexual. She is the author of raw & zero and stemmy things, both published by Nightboat Books. They believe in a free Palestine, a borderless world, and trans power.