Paisley Rekdal will read selections from West: A Translation with live guidance from the audience in a powerful, informative, and cathartic experience at 516 Words on Thursday, December 5, in Albuquerque.
516 Words: Reexamining the West with Paisley Rekdal
Thursday, December 5, 6-7:30 pm
Fusion | 708, Albuquerque
Delve into the history of the West through the lens of railroad workers’ histories, including Chinese laborers, and through the railroad’s impact on America with a dynamic, inter-media live reading and visual presentation from poet and scholar Paisley Rekdal.
In 2018, Rekdal was commissioned as Utah’s Poet Laureate to write a poem commemorating the 150th anniversary of the transcontinental completion. The result was West: A Translation, a linked collection of poems that respond to a Chinese elegy carved into the walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station where Chinese migrants to the United States were detained.
Existing both as an interactive website and as a book published by Copper Canyon Press, West: A Translation features poetry, lyric essays, and video. Rekdal will read selections from West with live guidance from the audience, aided by its visual components, in a moving, powerful, informative, and cathartic experience. A Q+A and moderated discussion with 516 Arts curator Olivia Amaya Ortiz will follow the presentation.
Rekdal is the director of the University of Utah’s American West Center and is the author of four books of nonfiction and seven collections of poetry. West: A Translation was long-listed for the 2024 National Book Award in Poetry, and was the winner of the 2024 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the 2024 Reading the West Award in Poetry.
Tickets are $15 for general admission, $10 for members of 516 Arts.
516arts.org
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