RSVP HERE!

When: Saturday, November, 2nd 6:00 PM

Where: 801 Islington Street, Suite 12, Portsmouth, NH 03801

As this event is taking place on Día de los Muertos, we invite guests to contribute to our Ofrenda (altar space). Please bring photos of ancestors and offerings of flowers, etc to add to the Ofrenda for the evening.

Join Diannely Antigua, who is both the youngest and the first person of color to be named Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, NH, and Ben Bacote, founder and director of NH PANTHER, writer, activist, and humanities teacher, for their latest offering in a series of lovely evenings of poetry and conversation. Antigua and Bacote will share selections by LatinX writers touching on the themes of love and resistance, and discuss the intersections of history, poetry, and activism through the lens of their personal experiences. Additionally, Antigua will record the event, to be featured on her podcast, Bread & Poetry. Appetizers and complimentary beverages provided by Vida Cantina.

When: September 21, 2023, 7 PM

Where: Nashua, NH Public Library

Join Diannely Antigua, who is both the youngest and the first person of color to be named Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, NH, and Ben Bacote, founder and director of NH PANTHER, writer, activist, and humanities teacher, for their latest offering in a series of lovely evenings of poetry and conversation. The Black Voices event is being hosted by Nashua Public Library in Nashua, NH. Antigua and Bacote will share selections by Black writers touching on the themes of love and resistance, and discuss the intersections of history, poetry, and activism through the lens of their personal experiences. Additionally, Antigua will record the event, to be featured on her podcast, Bread & Poetry, and Nashua Public LIbrary will broadcast the event in coordination with the local cable access channel for accessible viewing.

From Poe and Plath to Meds and Co-Pays: Poetry and Mental Illness

Date/Time: 9:00am - 10:15am on Saturday March 11, 2023
Location: Terrace Suite I, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 4

The troubled poet, their writing fueled by mental illness, is a stock figure in the public imagination. This romanticized view glosses over the difficulties of living with a mental health condition, whether it is one’s own or a family member’s. Poets who write about mental illness will discuss both craft and practical issues: Why write about this subject? How does it influence form? What are the ethics involved? What does it mean to write publicly about a topic that is taboo in your community?

Black Lives Matter Seacoast is proud to present our First Black Excellence Conference as Day 1 of our Black Excellence Weekend! This empowering, one day conference draws talented BIPOC professionals from across different industries by offering access to distinguished speakers and panelists, as well as a trusted environment to network, celebrate excellence among our peers, and share innovative practices to advance our community. This event is open for all to attend!

The conference will close out with a panel titled, “Speak It Into Existence: Expanding Black Youth’s Definition of Excellence in New Hampshire." It will be presented by Diannely Antigua, Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, New Hampshire & NH PANTHER (Plymouth Area Network To Help End Racism).

REGISTER HERE!

Register HERE!

Remaking a Life
Poetry & Personal Sanctuaries

Part storytelling, part poetry reading, this CreativeMornings talk will focus on the journey of making and remaking personal sanctuaries, a glimpse into the world of ongoing survivorhood.

Note: Sensitive topics including mental health, abuse and domestic violence may be addressed.

From the ages of nine to nineteen, Diannely (she/her) spent the majority of her time in a church sanctuary. Services were held Wednesday and Friday nights, and then Sunday mornings with the occasional fellowship or Bible study in the evenings. As if three days weren’t enough, she also went to middle school and high school at the church, Monday through Friday. Sometimes even Saturdays were spent at the church—cleaning or helping prep for Sunday after-service meals. That sanctuary alone encompassed her entire existence. She prayed, worshiped, sang, cried, learned geometry, ate Doritos, pined over a crush—all in that room. But what had once seemed like a safe haven from the horrors of the world became the horror itself. How was Diannely to find sanctuary outside of this once supposed sanctuary? This CreativeMornings talk will focus on her journey of making and remaking these personal sanctuaries. Part storytelling, part poetry reading, she hopes to leave listeners with a glimpse into the world of ongoing survivorhood.

Additional details

BE A ZERO WASTE HERO

We want to reduce our footprint, so please Bring Your Own Mug (and cloth napkin, if you’re feeling extra green).

This event is free, but advance registration is required. Registration opens at 9am on the Monday before the event. Please sign up for our newsletter to be notified when registration is open. 

The event is held at The Music Hall Lounge. Doors open at 8:30. Coffee will be served 8:30-9am. Talk begins at 9am and event ends at 10am. There is abundant paid parking behind the Music Hall Lounge and on surrounding side streets.

CreativeMornings Portsmouth is a platform for individuals to share their own truths/stories as they define it. The viewpoints and opinions expressed by any individual do not represent or reflect larger viewpoints or opinions by the CreativeMornings organization or any local chapter and not should be taken as universal truths or professional advice of any kind.

Register Here!

Moderator: Safiya Sinclair

Format: This is a free, live, virtual event.

Q&A: Please direct questions to the authors and moderator with CrowdCast's "Ask a Question" button and not the chat box. Questions will be shared with the moderator, and the moderator will attempt to get to as many audience questions as possible toward the end of the session.

Chat: Feel free to use the chat box to share your thoughts and virtually cheer for and share kudos with the session's participants! Disorderly comments will be removed immediately, at our producers' sole discretion. Please refer to the code of conduct.

Books: Please consider clicking the "Buy the Book(s)" button below the video feed, which leads to BookPeople, Texas Book Festival's partner bookseller. Your purchase helps support the author(s), independent bookselling, and the Texas Book Festival. Thank you.

Authors

Jake Skeets

Genya Turovskaya

Diannely Antigua

Aria Aber

Featured books

Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers

The Breathing Body of This Thought

Ugly Music

Hard Damage

Editors José Olivarez and Willie Perdomo will be joined by special guests Diannely Antigua, Rigoberto González, Janel Pineda, and Raquel Salas Rivera, for an event to launch the new anthology The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext

Tuesday, April 28 at 7:00 PM EDT

Register through Eventbrite to receive a link to the videoconference on the day of the event.

While this event is free for all to attend, we hope you’ll consider making a donation to support the work of these artists. All donations received will be shared between the performers.

Time & Location

Apr 02, 7:00 PM

Zoom Meeting

Details:

Dominican-American writers in Conversation:

Cleyvis Natera is an immigrant from the Dominican Republic. She arrived in New York City at 10 years old with her mother and siblings and has made the United States her home. She received a Bachelor of Arts from Skidmore College and a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction from New York University. She is a recipient of the 2019 Carol Houck Smith Returning Contributor Award in Fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She is a fiction fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA). Cleyvis received merit based writing scholarships to the Juniper Summer Writing Institute at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the VONA Voices Foundation. Cleyvis is hard at work on her first novel, “Neruda on the Park.”  She currently lives in Montclair, NJ with her husband and two young children. She is a 2019-2020 PEN America Writing For Justice Fellow.

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. She received her B.A. 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, and the Fine Arts Work Center Summer Program. Her work has been nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her poems can be found in Washington Square Review, Bennington Review, The Adroit Journal, Cosmonauts Avenue, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere. Her heart is in Brooklyn. 

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Northern Essex Community College’s Haverhill Campus, 100 Elliott St.

Free and open to the public, the reading will be held from 2 to 3:15 pm in the Pentucket Bank Lecture Hall, located in the Spurk Building.

To read full press release…