“CARIBBEAN NARRATIVES: HISTORY, HEROES & HEALING” – PANEL at Miami Book Fair
Nov
23
2:00 PM14:00

“CARIBBEAN NARRATIVES: HISTORY, HEROES & HEALING” – PANEL at Miami Book Fair

“CARIBBEAN NARRATIVES: HISTORY, HEROES & HEALING” – PANEL

Room 8302 (Building 8, 3rd Floor)

DIANNELY ANTIGUA’s Good Monster presents a raw and innovative poetry collection that navigates themes of trauma, chronic pain, and mental illness. MERLE COLLINSOcean Stirrings: A Work of Fiction in Tribute to Louise Langdon Norton Little, Working Mother and Activist, Mother of Malcolm X and Seven Siblings offers a poetic exploration of Little’s life, intertwining historical narrative with the power of imagination to illuminate a figure often overshadowed by her famous son. GEOFFREY PHILP’s graphic novel My Name is Marcus introduces readers to Marcus Garvey, the Jamaican icon who ignited a global movement for social justice. Together, these works offer profound insights into the history, heroes, and healing that define the Caribbean experience. Moderated by poet, blogger, and radio host SHARON CORINTHIAN.


View Event →
THREE POETS LAUREATE IN CONVERSATION - PANEL at Miami Book Fair
Nov
24
2:00 PM14:00

THREE POETS LAUREATE IN CONVERSATION - PANEL at Miami Book Fair

THREE POETS LAUREATE IN CONVERSATION

Room 8303 (Building 8, 3rd Floor)

Join us for a poetry reading and conversation on the role of the localized poet laureate in service to the community. DIANNELY ANTIGUA (Portsmouth, New Hampshire) grapples with the body as a site of pain and trauma in Good Monster, chronicling her reckoning with shame, her fallout with faith, and the desire to feel pleasure in an inhospitable body. Love Prodigal by TRACI BRIMHALL (Kansas) lives in the dishevelment of starting over from a divorce and a new diagnosis, cycles of loss, heartbreak, family, and chronic illness, reaching for the slow, messy, and imperfect process of healing. CARIDAD MORO-GRONLIER (Miami-Dade County) plunges readers into Cuban American life on-the-hyphen in Tortillera, considering the role of language on gender, sexuality, diaspora, and shame. Moderated by NICOLE TALLMAN, poetry ambassador for Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.

View Event →
FIESTA DE POETAS: A CELEBRATION OF LATINO POETRY at Miami Book Fair
Nov
24
5:00 PM17:00

FIESTA DE POETAS: A CELEBRATION OF LATINO POETRY at Miami Book Fair

FIESTA DE POETAS: A CELEBRATION OF LATINO POETRY

Room 2106 (Building 2, 1st Floor)

Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology edited by poet and critic RIGOBERTO GONZÁLEZ gathers more than 180 poets in Spanish and English spanning from the 17th century to the present. These poems bear witness to the beauty and power of this vibrant and expanding tradition: its profound engagement with pasts both mythical and historical, its reckoning with the complexities of language, land, and identity, and its vision of a nation enriched by the stories of immigrants, exiles, refugees, and their descendants.

Join us for an evening of poetry celebrating the richest, most revelatory collection of 21st-century Latino poetry ever published, followed by a dance party. Featuring DIANNELY ANTIGUA, RICHARD BLANCO, SANDRA M. CASTILLO, ADRIAN CASTRO, ARIEL FRANCISCO, RIGOBERTO GONZÁLEZ, FARID MATUK, PABLO MEDINA, DEBORAH PAREDEZ, GABRIEL RAMIREZ, and ALEXANDRA LYTTON REGALADO. Introduction by CARIDAD MORO-GRONLIER, poet laureate for Miami-Dade County; moderated by MAX RUDIN, president and publisher of Library of America.

View Event →

Latino Poetry: Places We Call Home
Nov
12
5:00 PM17:00

Latino Poetry: Places We Call Home

Poetry Reading Featuring Diannely Antigua -  November 12, Durham, NH

Nossrat Yassini Poet in Residence, Diannely Antigua will read her poem, "Golden Shovel with Solstice" which is included in the Latino Poetry anthology and share some of her other work with us as well. We will also read poems from the anthology focusing on the themes of Voice and Resistance, Family and Community, and Language. Our readers will include Daniel Chávez Landeros and Lucía Montás (both from UNH) and Mary Russell (Center for the Book). This event, which is free and open to the public, will be held on Tuesday November 12, 2024, 5-7pm at Durham Public Library.

Latino Poetry: Places We Call Home is a major public humanities initiative, planned for 2024–25, that celebrates and explores the multifaceted legacy of Latino poetry. It is directed by Library of America and funded with generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Lugares que llamamos hogar es una gran iniciativa pública en el campo de las humanidades, que se proyecta para el 2024 – 2025. Es dirigida por Library of América con el generoso apoyo del Fondo Nacional para las Humanidades.

View Event →
Reckoning: Diannely Antigua & Danez Smith at Portland Book Festival
Nov
2
11:30 AM11:30

Reckoning: Diannely Antigua & Danez Smith at Portland Book Festival

Whiting Award–winning poet Diannely Antigua (Good Monster) and National Book Award finalist Danez Smith (Bluff) are joined by Oregon Public Broadcasting host and producer Jenn Chávez to reflect on the role despair and violence, hope and resilience play in their latest poetry collections.

About Good Monster:

With an equal dose of fatalism and dark wit, Antigua captures the body’s capacity to cage and cradle sadness.

Diannely Antigua’s Good Monster grapples with the body as a site of chronic pain and trauma. Poignant and guttural, the collection “voyage[s] the land between crisis and hope,” chronicling Antigua’s reckoning with shame and her fallout with faith. As poems cage and cradle devastating truths–a stepfather’s abusive touch, a mother’s “soft harm”–the speaker’s anxiety, depression, and boundless need become monstrous shadows. Here, poems dance on bars, speak in tongues, and cry in psych wards. When “God [becomes] a house [she] can’t leave,” language becomes the only currency left. We see the messiness of survival unfold through sestinas, a series of Sad Girl sonnets, and diary entries–an invented collage form using Antigua’s personal journals. At the crux of despair, Antigua locates a resilient desire to find a love that will remain, to feel pleasure in an inhospitable body and, above all, to keep on living.

About Bluff:

Written after two years of artistic silence, during which the world came to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Minneapolis became the epicenter of protest following the murder of George Floyd, Bluff is Danez Smith’s powerful reckoning with their role and responsibility as a poet and with their hometown of the Twin Cities. This is a book of awakening out of violence, guilt, shame, and critical pessimism to wonder and imagine how we can strive toward a new existence in a world that seems to be dissolving into desolate futures.

Smith brings a startling urgency to these poems, their questions demanding a new language, a deep self-scrutiny, and virtuosic textual shapes. A series of ars poetica gives way to “anti poetica” and “ars america” to implicate poetry’s collusions with unchecked capitalism. A photographic collage accrues across a sequence to make clear the consequences of America’s acceptance of mass shootings. A brilliant long poem–part map, part annotation, part visual argument–offers the history of Saint Paul’s vibrant Rondo neighborhood before and after officials decided to run an interstate directly through it.

Bluff is a kind of manifesto about artistic resilience, even when time and will can seem fleeting, when the places we most love–those given and made–are burning. In this soaring collection, Smith turns to honesty, hope, rage, and imagination to envision futures that seem possible.

View Event →
Monstrous Bodies Poetry Reading & Conversation with Amanda Hawkins & Diannely Antigua
Nov
1
7:00 PM19:00

Monstrous Bodies Poetry Reading & Conversation with Amanda Hawkins & Diannely Antigua

Join poets Amanda Hawkins and Diannely Antigua at UpUp Books where they’ll read from their collections and discuss how poetry “cage[s] and cradle[s]” visceral truths. Hawkins’s forthcoming collection, When I Say the Bones I Mean the Bones(Wandering Aengus, 2025), “burns through themes of living, dying, of the spiritual, how human beings fit onto and into the earth.” Antigua’s Good Monster (Copper Canyon, 2024) “reckons with shame and her fallout with faith.” Both poets embrace darkness and ambiguity in their pursuit of spaces – bodily and otherwise – worthy of being called home.

View Event →
Dodge Poetry Festival: Because We Come from Everything Panel
Oct
18
to Oct 21

Dodge Poetry Festival: Because We Come from Everything Panel

12:40-1:50 PM – Victoria Theater in NJPAC – PANEL: Because We Come from Everything Hosted by Letras Latinas (Carmen Calatyud, Blas Falconer, Diannely Antigua, Naomi Ortiz)

Poetry is for everyone at The 20th Dodge Poetry Festival, October 17 – 19. Downtown Newark will be buzzing with music and spoken word performances in this joyful, community-driven celebration. Hear headliners Mahogany L. Browne, Tyehimba Jess, Claudia Rankine, Sonia Sanchez, Afaa Michael Weaver, Aracelis Girmay and more — along with dozens of activities, workshops, poetry slams and jams. And don’t miss Saturday’s free Family Fun Day in Military Park, with a DJ, community poets, drag storytelling, face painting and fun.

Purchase tickets HERE!

View Event →
Maine Lit Fest: A Showcase of Black Poet Laureates
Oct
9
6:00 PM18:00

Maine Lit Fest: A Showcase of Black Poet Laureates

Wednesday, October 9

6:00 PM A SHOWCASE OF BLACK POET LAUREATES

PORTLAND - SPACE Gallery

Five Black poets from all over the U.S. who have held or currently hold the title of Poet Laureate in their city will read their original work and engage in a panel discussion moderated by former poet laureate of Portland, Maine Maya Williams. Featuring A$iahMae (Charleston, South Carolina), Andrea Vocab Sanderson (San Antonio, Texas), Diannely Antigua (Portsmouth, New Hampshire), Junious "Jay" Ward (Charlotte, North Carolina), and Melissa Ferrer-Civil (Kansas City, Missouri).


More Info HERE!

View Event →
Tell It Slant Poetry Festival: Panel featuring Oliver de la Paz & Diannely Antigua
Sep
28
1:00 PM13:00

Tell It Slant Poetry Festival: Panel featuring Oliver de la Paz & Diannely Antigua

1-2:30pm [Hybrid] — Poets of the Public: New England Poet Laureates
Poets will share about their role as Poet Laureate in their respective communities, sharing information about the programming we each developed, and will discuss what it means to be a “Civic Poet” with a broad set of responsibilities and audiences while also maintaining one’s own personal writing practice. Featuring Oliver de la Paz and Diannely Antigua.

Register HERE!

View Event →
Tell It Slant Poetry Festival: Open Mic with Oliver de la Paz & Diannely Antigua
Sep
27
7:00 PM19:00

Tell It Slant Poetry Festival: Open Mic with Oliver de la Paz & Diannely Antigua

7-8:30pm [Hybrid] — Open Mic Night with Oliver de la Paz and Diannely Antigua

Bring your poems to Emily Dickinson’s garden! Readers will have 5 minutes each to make us feel “physically as if the top of [our] head[s] were taken off!” (Emily Dickinson to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 16 August 1870) Featured poets Oliver de la Paz and Diannelly Antigua will follow the open mic. Open mic sign-ups will be handled in advance via a Google Form and a lottery, and selected readers will be notified. Stay tuned for the Google form, which will be posted here.

Register HERE!

View Event →
Brooklyn Poets Reading Series with Diannely Antigua, Megan Pinto, & Hala Allan
Sep
20
7:00 PM19:00

Brooklyn Poets Reading Series with Diannely Antigua, Megan Pinto, & Hala Allan

Join us for our next Brooklyn Poets Reading Series event at 144 Montague on Friday, September 20, featuring poets Megan Pinto, Diannely Antigua and Hala Alyan! Free and open to the public, the event will also be livestreamed via Zoom. Wine reception for in-person attendees will begin at 6 PM and readings will begin at 7. Book signing to follow.

Get tickets HERE!

View Event →
The Notebooks Collective with Eugenia Leigh & Diannely Antigua
Jul
23
7:30 PM19:30

The Notebooks Collective with Eugenia Leigh & Diannely Antigua

Join us on Tuesday, July 23 when we welcome poets Eugenia Leigh & Diannely Antigua to The Notebooks Collective for an evening of conversation about creativity and connection. We are thrilled to host this In Conversation, in which the poets will discuss their newest books, Bianca and Good Monster respectively, among other things.

This is a virtual event. RSVP here to receive the zoom link to join.

View Event →
Caribbean American Heritage Month at the CPL: A Poetry Reading (In-Person & Virtual)
Jun
26
6:00 PM18:00

Caribbean American Heritage Month at the CPL: A Poetry Reading (In-Person & Virtual)

Register HERE!

Join the Cambridge Public Library in celebrating Caribbean American Heritage Month with a poetry reading and conversation featuring two award-winning local poets with roots in the Caribbean, DIANNELY ANTIGUA and PATRICK SYLVAIN.

Each poet will read poems for about twenty minutes, to be followed by a wide-ranging conversation and audience Q&A.

Diannely Antigua is a Dominican American poet and educator, born and raised in Massachusetts. She is the author of two books of poetry, including Good Monster, published just last month by Copper Canyon Press. She is the Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, NH.

Patrick Sylvain is a Haitian-American poet, writer, social and literary critic, and photographer who has published widely on Haiti and Haitian diaspora culture, politics, language, and religion. He is the author of several poetry books in English and Haitian, and his poems have been nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize. He teaches at Simmons 

This reading and talk will be hybrid (via Zoom). It is co-sponsored by the Cambridge Public Library Foundation.

Date: Wednesday, June 26, 2024

Time: 6:00pm - 7:30pm

Location: Lecture Hall, Main Library

Registration is required. There are 150 in-person seats available. There are 150 online seats available.

View Event →
Reading at Brookline Booksmith (In-Person & Livestream)
Jun
20
7:00 PM19:00

Reading at Brookline Booksmith (In-Person & Livestream)

In person at Brookline Booksmith! Join us for an evening of poetry with Amy M. Alvarez, Octavio González, Anthony DiPietro, & Diannely Antigua.

This event is part of Third Thursdays Poetry, a monthly reading series at Brookline Booksmith.

Register for the event!

RSVP to let us know you're coming! Depending on the volume of responses, an RSVP may be required for entrance to the event. You will also be alerted to important details about the program, including safety requirements, cancellations, and book signing updates.

Livestream!

Barring technical difficulty, this event will be livestreamed on our store YouTube channel.

View Event →
PSNY: The Moon Is Queer Poetry Virtual Poetry Workshop
Jun
6
7:00 PM19:00

PSNY: The Moon Is Queer Poetry Virtual Poetry Workshop

Register HERE!

With poet Diannely Antigua!

Poets love the moon, and the moon is queer. Yes, I said it. I'm interested in the word "queer" in relation to identity, but also as a verb, as in "to queer", to challenge expectations. Looking at poems written by beloved queer poets such as Chen Chen, Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, and Donika Kelly, we will examine the moon in poetry, celebrate it, change it, and arrive at our own conclusions. This workshop is intended to be generative and exploratory. All levels of poetry experience are welcome!

About the Instructor: Diannely Antigua is a Dominican American poet and educator, born and raised in Massachusetts. Her debut collection Ugly Music (YesYes Books, 2019) was the winner of the Pamet River Prize and a 2020 Whiting Award. Her second poetry collection Good Monster is forthcoming with Copper Canyon Press in 2024. She received her BA in English from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where she won the Jack Kerouac Creative Writing Scholarship, and received her MFA at NYU, where she was awarded a Global Research Initiative Fellowship to Florence, Italy. She is the recipient of additional fellowships from CantoMundo, Community of Writers, Fine Arts Work Center Summer Program, and was a finalist for the 2021 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and chosen for The Best of the Net Anthology. Her poems can be found in Poem-a-Day, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Washington Square Review, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. She currently teaches in the MFA Writing Program at the University of New Hampshire as the inaugural Nossrat Yassini Poet in Residence. She hosts the podcast Bread & Poetry and is currently the Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the youngest and first person of color to receive the title. In 2023, she was awarded an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship to launch The Bread & Poetry Project.

* *This workshop will take place on Zoom.**

View Event →
Diannely Antigua @ Brooklyn Poets Poetry Festival
May
24
to May 26

Diannely Antigua @ Brooklyn Poets Poetry Festival

Register HERE!

Join us for the second annual Brooklyn Poets Poetry Festival from May 24 to 26 at 144 Montague Street or via Zoom! In the mornings, we’ll explore creative process and write new material in generative workshops. In the afternoons, we’ll listen to readings by the day's instructors, engage in craft talks with acclaimed poets and listen to panels on a variety of topics. In the evenings, participants will get the chance to read their own work during open mics and listen to readings from the day's panelists and other poets in our community. Read more about this year's lineup and view the full schedule below.

You can register for a single-day or three-day pass for in-person or virtual attendance. All participants will have access to livestream recordings of festival sessions upon request.

If you’re in need of financial aid, you can apply for a fellowship to register for the festival for free or at reduced cost. Fellowship applications are due April 21 at 11:59 PM (US ET). We strongly encourage writers from historically underserved and marginalized communities to apply, including (but not limited to) writers of color, LGBTQ+ writers, writers with disabilities and women writers. Click here to apply.

Note that by participating in, you agree to abide by our code of conduct and COVID-19 policy. All in-person attendees are required to wear masks (regardless of vaccination status) except readers at a safe distance on stage, and we will have masks available. Brooklyn Poets reserves the right to dismiss from our programs any participant found to be in violation of these policies. Thank you for respecting our community.

Closed captions will be available for the event through the Zoom livestream. For more information and to request additional accommodations, contact us.

View Event →
Poetry at 5th Avenue Blooms Festival
May
19
11:40 AM11:40

Poetry at 5th Avenue Blooms Festival

  • 550 Madison Avenue Garden City Park, NY, 11040 United States (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Poetry at Fifth Avenue Blooms, Presented by Van Cleef & Arpels in Partnership with the Academy of American Poets

Join us on Sunday, May 19, from 11:40 a.m to 2 p.m. for free hourly poetry performances by Diannely Antigua, Omotara James, and Maya C. Popa at Fifth Avenue Blooms. This annual festival celebrating spring is presented by Van Cleef & Arpels and the Fifth Avenue Association, in partnership with the Academy of American Poets.

Diannely Antigua is the author of the poetry collections Ugly Music (YesYes Books, 2019) and Good Monster (Copper Canyon Press, 2024). She hosts the podcast Bread & Poetry and is currently the Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, NH.

Omotara James is the author of the poetry collection Song of My Softening (Alice James Books, 2024) and the chapbook Daughter Tongue (Akashic Books, 2018). James’s poems have been featured in NPR’s Morning Edition, Poem-a-Day, and Poetry Daily.

Maya C. Popa is most recently the author of Wound is the Origin of Wonder (W. W. Norton 2022; Picador, 2023) and the chapbook Dear Life (Smith|Doorstop, 2022). Her newsletter, Poetry Today, is a Substack bestseller and featured publication.

Schedule:

  • 11:40 a.m. to 12 p.m.: Maya C. Popa

  • 12:40 p.m. to 1 p.m.: Diannely Antigua

  • 1:40 p.m. to 2 p.m.: Omotara James

View Event →
Diannely Antigua at TEDx Portsmouth!
May
10
9:00 AM09:00

Diannely Antigua at TEDx Portsmouth!

Being Human

Friday, May 10, 2024 at The Music Hall

One of the biggest TEDx events in the country, TEDxPortsmouth is an immersive, full-day event showcasing a diverse lineup of inspiring speakers, rousing artistic performances, local food and more. This 100% volunteer-run annual event is where the Seacoast comes together to connect and explore big ideas — science, the arts, the environment, humanity, entrepreneurship — in a shared experience emphasizing community, conversation, and inspiration. TEDxPortsmouth garners not only a huge local following, but a global reach with speaker videos generating more than a million views (and counting!).

For more information and to buy tickets to this amazing event, click here!

View Event →
Free Generative Poetry Workshop @ Portsmouth Public Library
Apr
27
12:00 PM12:00

Free Generative Poetry Workshop @ Portsmouth Public Library

Register HERE!

Join us for a FREE Generative Poetry Workshop for National Poetry Month with Poet Laureate Diannely Antigua and guest poet Alexandra Halaby.

Alexandra Halaby is a multidisciplinary artist interested in the intersections of language, the visual field, and collage. She’s the winner of chapbook competition for My Arab World & other poems of the body. 

View Event →
Nossrat Yassini Poetry Festival @ UNH
Apr
12
to Apr 14

Nossrat Yassini Poetry Festival @ UNH

Join us at UNH for a weekend full of poetry, readings, panels, celebrations and more!

Click here for the full schedule!

Click here to register!

Find Diannely Antigua at the following event:

7:00 - 8:30 PM  |   Headline Event - Dimond Library's Courtyard Reading Room

New Hampshire Teen Poetry Prize Winners: Leonardo Chung, Pearl Hoekstra-Toste, Pranavi Vedula

Headliners: Diannely Antigua, Mckendy Fils-Aime, Nathan McClain

View Event →