Mayra A. Rodríguez Castro, Lillian-Yvonne Bertram

November 17, 2022, 6pm
Géza, 306 Maujer

An evening with two readings, moving from the courtyard into Geza.

Mayra reads with the November wind in our courtyard accompanied by Senti (2022), her new sound sculpture made of consecutive hollow, metal chimes tuned to Mayra’s voice. “As a voice is drawn from currents, as air enters the throat and rides, as temperature soars within, and daytime thins or dilates, as words fill the mouth whenever spoken, unique in each room and finding shape, as delicate a climate, a voice oscillates.”

Lillian-Yvonne works at “the intersections of the innovative and experimental with race, gender, and the more-than-human world. My work is ground in inquiry, ways of knowing, and how language can (and cannot) communicate experiences felt in body and mind.” Known for their versatile practice in poetry, prose, and essays, as well as in photography, video and emerging technologies, they will read new work and forthcoming poems from their next book of poetry, Negative Money.

This event is organized in the framework of SIREN (some poetics), a group exhibition and a poetics devoted to technologies of myth and mouth, earth and alarm, gender and language.

Prior registration is recommended.

Mayra A. Rodríguez Castro, Senti, 2022 (Installation view at Amant)

Mayra A. Rodríguez Castro is a writer. She is the editor of Dream of Europe: selected seminars and interviews: 1984-1992 (Kenning Editions, 2020), a collection of unpublished seminars and interviews by Audre Lorde across Western Europe and Germany. She is a former Research Fellow at The John F. Kennedy Institute of Northamerican Studies (Freie Universität Berlin, 2018) and recipient of the Anne Waldman Fellowship (Naropa University, 2019).

Mayra has collaborated extensively with De Appel in Amsterdam, most recently delivering the keynote address Ocean Blue (2022). Her writing and contributions appear in Social Text Journal, Changes Review, The Poetry Project, and South As a State of Mind, among others.

She lives across cities.

Lillian-Yvonne Bertram is the author of the forthcoming book of poems, Negative Money (Soft Skull Press, 2023). Their book Travesty Generator, a book of computational poetry, was longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award in Poetry and received the 2020 Poetry Society of America Anna Rabinowitz Prize for adventuresome and interdisciplinary work. Their previous books and chapbooks include How Narrow My Escapes (Diagram/New Michigan), Personal Science (Tupelo Press), a slice from the cake made of air (Red Hen Press) and But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise which was chosen by Claudia Rankine for the 2010 Benjamin Saltman Award.

Their poetry and prose and digital/computational work has appeared in numerous journals and they have received fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.