Poetry Reading Group

We are excited to launch our new monthly reading group, celebrating some of the most unique and successful poetry of our times, with a focus on new collections.

Our first choice is Nuar Alsadir's Animal Joy, an ode to spontaneity and feeling alive. We will discuss Alsadir's extraordinary insight through this essay collection to help us understand contemporary poetry, which we will discuss in future groups.

Laughter shakes us out of our deadness. An outburst of spontaneous laughter is an eruption from the unconscious that, like political resistance, poetry, or self-revelation, expresses a provocative, impish drive to burst free from external constraints. Taking laughter’s revelatory capacity as a starting point, and rooted in Nuar Alsadir’s experience as a poet and psychoanalyst, Animal Joy seeks to recover the sensation of feeling alive and embodied.

After drawing a discussion about the book itself, we will read a few single poems outside of Alsadir's work, talk about how we read poetry, how 'spontaneity and feeling alive’ matter in the discussed poems, and other related topics that may arise.

Whether you are a seasoned poetry reader or new to the form, we want to ensure that everyone can take something away from each session.