National Book Release

Henri Cole

Pierce the Skin - Selected Poems 1982-2007

 "a master of cadence, and a connoisseur of the suggestive mysteries" - Colm Toibon

Cosponsored by Lame Duck Books, The Grolier Poetry Bookshop, and Back Pages Books @ The Pierre Menard Art Gallery

Back Pages Books &

DAMIAN PLATT 

Culture is Our Weapon
Making Music and Changing Lives in Rio di Janeiro

In 1993 the Brazilian police massacred 21 people in Rio di Janeiro.  Out of the tragedy Grupo Cultural AfroReggae emerged - a community-based organization that takes youth out of shantytown gangs and fights back against violence with art.

Join us for a panel discussion with activist, journalist, and author Damian Platt as he discusses how culture has put violence and terror on notice in one of the most dangerous places in South America.

Panelists include:

SAPNA PADTE, Director of Consulting & Training, Teen Empowerment, Boston

KIM DAWSON, Director of Programs for ZUMIX, an organization that serves empowered urban youth through music. 

MARCUS SANTOS, a contemporary percussionist and educator, and native of Bahia, Brazil. 

Damian Platt was born in Nairobi and grew up in West London. He was a Brazil Campaigner for Amnesty International between 1997 and 2005, where he researched human rights in the USA, Colombia, Haiti and Brazil among other countries. Between 2006 and 2008 he was the Coordinator for International Partnerships at the cultural group AfroReggae in Rio de Janeiro. He is currently involved in a number of cultural projects in Rio, including the setting up of a cultural centre in Providência, the first officially recognized favela in Brazil. 

This event is free and open for all and is co-sponsored by Back Pages Books and The Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice.

Acclaimed poet Vera Pavlova will read from her stunning collection of poems "If There is Something to Desire" at the Pierre Menard Gallery. Featured in The New Yorker and on The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Pavlova's stunning poems first came to American readers a decade ago in translations by Derek Walcott and her husband, Steven Seymour. 

This reading is part of our ongoing co-sponsored poetry series with Lame Duck Books and the Grolier Poetry Bookshop, America's oldest all-poetry bookshop. 

Strategies for Helping Bright, Quirky, Socially Awkward Children to Thrive at Home and at School

Bright, eccentric, and often socially awkward, so-called left-brain children often have talents and inclinations that lean heavily toward the logical, linear, analytical, and introverted side of the human psyche--what is commonly referred to as the "left brain"--as opposed to the "right brain" which is our emotional, holistic, intuitive, and extroverted side. Left-brain kids are often found on the margins of the classroom and the playground, the ones who tend not to fit in with their peers but have rich interior and intellectual lives.

Join us for an evening with Dr. Katharine Beals whose research and interviews with parents and children, has led to a new understanding of left-brain kids and practical strategies for nurturing and supporting them, both at school and at home.

EDWARD HIRSCH

National Poetry Month Kick-Off

"The Living Fire: New & Selected Poems"

Join us for the kick-off of National Poetry Month with acclaimed poet Edward Hirsch as we celebrate his new book "The Living Fire". President of the Guggenheim Foundation, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, Hirsch is among our finest poets, and an enduring voice for the power of emotion in the song of words.

MICHAEL McCLURE                                                                                            
National Book Release 

MYSTERIOSOS and Other Poems

TICKETS: $8 in Advance (Click to Purchase), $10 at the Door

In his first Boston-area appearance in a generation, acclaimed poet Michael McClure will read in celebration of the national book release of his new collection, "Mysteriosos and Other Poems".  From age 22, when he read alongside Allen Ginsberg at the first reading of "Howl" up to today, McClure has been among the few people at the center of almost all that we now think of as counter-culture in America.  This event is co-sponsored by Back Pages Books, Lame Duck Books, and the Grolier Poetry Bookshop, America's oldest all-poetry bookstore.