Celebrating Brooklyn Poets, Past and Present
Dip into the Center for Brooklyn History’s collection and you will find a vast range of poetry. There are works by household names like Walt Whitman, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Marianne Moore, as well as hundreds, perhaps thousands, of poems by writers whose works live in the nooks and crannies of the archives. Hand-written or published in zines, tucked away in acid-free boxes labeled “Brooklyn Poetry Circle Collection” and “Rioghan Kirchner Civil Rights in Brooklyn Collection”, these poems give voice to former times and lived experiences of Brooklyn. Join us in CBH’s historic Othmer library for an evening of readings that bring the past and present into dialogue, as contemporary poets share examples from the CBH archive and from their own work. A pop-up display of poetry selections from the CBH Collection, curated by Special Collections and Outreach Librarian Kevina Tidwell, will be on display for the event.
Co-presented by Brooklyn Poets
This program is offered, in part, in connection with the forthcoming publication of the CBH Poetry Research Guide, a resource for those interested in exploring the poems held in CBH’s collection.
Participants
Dina Abdulhadi is a Palestinian American writer and ex-scientist from the US South. Her writing has appeared in Mizna, the Worcester Review, Breakwater Review and Reckoning. She is based in Brooklyn, NY. References in her work to the ongoing genocide and mass displacement of the Palestinian people are not metaphorical, and this genocide is not inevitable. She asks that whatever grief her work stirs in you moves you to action to resist this genocide.
Morgan Boyle is a poet from Nebraska currently based in Ridgewood, Queens. Her work can be found in FENCE, HAD, Bullshit Lit, and dream boy book club, among other journals, as well as in Peach Mag’s Something Right Here anthology. Boyle is a two-time winner of Poem of the Month honors at the Brooklyn Poets Yawp. She can be found on Instagram and Twitter, where she was briefly banned for cyberbullying the moon.
Micaela Camacho-Tenreiro is a Venezuelan-American poet, dancer and translator. Her writing appears in the American Poetry Review and is forthcoming from manywor(l)ds. She received a 2023 finalist award from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and holds a BA in Hispanic studies from Brown University. Based in northern New Jersey, she facilitates open mics and workshops with ARTS By The People.
Andrew E. Colarusso was born and raised in Brooklyn NY. He is author of The Sovereign (Dalkey Archive 2017), Souvenirs (Baobab 2022), and Hívado (Flood Editions 2022). He is also owner of independent bookstore Taylor & Co. Books in Ditmas Park.
Jessica Greenbaum’s most recent collection, Spilled and Gone, was chosen by the Boston Globe as a Best Book, and her previous one, The Two Yvonnes was named a Best Book by Library Journal. Poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Paris Review, Yale Review and The New York Review of Books, and are forthcoming in Best American Poetry, 2024. She is the co-editor of Treelines: 21st Century American Poems, and Mishkan HaSeder, the first ever poetry Haggadah. A recipient of awards from the NEA and the Poetry Society of America, she teaches inside and outside academia, including around Jewish text at Central Synagogue and Congregation Beth Elohim, and, as a social worker, with communities who have experienced trauma. She is a proud board member of Brooklyn Poets.
Jason Koo is a second-generation Korean American poet, educator, editor and nonprofit director. He is the author of the poetry collections More Than Mere Light, America's Favorite Poem and Man on Extremely Small Island. His fourth full-length collection of poetry, No Rest, was one of the winners of the Diode Editions Book Prize and is forthcoming this spring. His work has been published in Best American Poetry 2022, Missouri Review, Poetry Northwest, Village Voice and Yale Review, among other places, and won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center and New York State Writers Institute. He is an associate teaching professor of English and the director of creative writing at Quinnipiac University and the founder and executive director of Brooklyn Poets.
D. Nurkse's twelfth poetry collection A Country of Strangers, a "new and selected," was published by Knopf in 2022. His poetry has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, three Pushcart Prizes, and appeared in six editions of Best American Poetry, The New Yorker, Poetry, and The Paris Review. He's also worked in human rights, served a term on the board of Amnesty International-USA, and taught at Rikers Island. A former poet laureate of Brooklyn, he lives in the borough with his wife Beth Bosworth and the wild puppy Zephyr.
Miller Oberman is a poet, editor and professor, and the author of The Unstill Ones, poems and translations, published as part of the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets, 2017. His second book of poems, Impossible Things is forthcoming from Duke UP in fall 2024. Miller is the recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, a 92Y Discovery Prize, and Poetry magazine’s John Frederick Nims Memorial Prize for Translation. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, London Review of Books, the Nation, Boston Review, Poem-a-Day, and Foglifter. Miller is an editor at Broadsided Press, which publishes monthly visual-literary collaborations as free posters for anyone to download and print. He teaches poetry workshops at Brooklyn Poets and directs the First-Year Writing program at Eugene Lang College at The New School. Miller lives with his family in Queens, New York.
Dip into the Center for Brooklyn History’s collection and you will find a vast range of poetry. There are works by household names like Walt Whitman, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Marianne Moore, as well as hundreds, perhaps thousands, of poems by writers whose works live in the nooks and crannies of the archives. Hand-written or published in zines, tucked away in acid-free boxes labeled “Brooklyn Poetry Circle Collection” and “Rioghan Kirchner Civil Rights in Brooklyn Collection”, these poems give voice to former times and lived experiences of Brooklyn. Join us in CBH’s historic Othmer library for an evening of readings that bring the past and present into dialogue, as contemporary poets share examples from the CBH archive and from their own work. A pop-up display of poetry selections from the CBH Collection, curated by Special Collections and Outreach Librarian Kevina Tidwell, will be on display for the event.
Co-presented by Brooklyn Poets
This program is offered, in part, in connection with the forthcoming publication of the CBH Poetry Research Guide, a resource for those interested in exploring the poems held in CBH’s collection.
Participants
Dina Abdulhadi is a Palestinian American writer and ex-scientist from the US South. Her writing has appeared in Mizna, the Worcester Review, Breakwater Review and Reckoning. She is based in Brooklyn, NY. References in her work to the ongoing genocide and mass displacement of the Palestinian people are not metaphorical, and this genocide is not inevitable. She asks that whatever grief her work stirs in you moves you to action to resist this genocide.
Morgan Boyle is a poet from Nebraska currently based in Ridgewood, Queens. Her work can be found in FENCE, HAD, Bullshit Lit, and dream boy book club, among other journals, as well as in Peach Mag’s Something Right Here anthology. Boyle is a two-time winner of Poem of the Month honors at the Brooklyn Poets Yawp. She can be found on Instagram and Twitter, where she was briefly banned for cyberbullying the moon.
Micaela Camacho-Tenreiro is a Venezuelan-American poet, dancer and translator. Her writing appears in the American Poetry Review and is forthcoming from manywor(l)ds. She received a 2023 finalist award from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and holds a BA in Hispanic studies from Brown University. Based in northern New Jersey, she facilitates open mics and workshops with ARTS By The People.
Andrew E. Colarusso was born and raised in Brooklyn NY. He is author of The Sovereign (Dalkey Archive 2017), Souvenirs (Baobab 2022), and Hívado (Flood Editions 2022). He is also owner of independent bookstore Taylor & Co. Books in Ditmas Park.
Jessica Greenbaum’s most recent collection, Spilled and Gone, was chosen by the Boston Globe as a Best Book, and her previous one, The Two Yvonnes was named a Best Book by Library Journal. Poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Paris Review, Yale Review and The New York Review of Books, and are forthcoming in Best American Poetry, 2024. She is the co-editor of Treelines: 21st Century American Poems, and Mishkan HaSeder, the first ever poetry Haggadah. A recipient of awards from the NEA and the Poetry Society of America, she teaches inside and outside academia, including around Jewish text at Central Synagogue and Congregation Beth Elohim, and, as a social worker, with communities who have experienced trauma. She is a proud board member of Brooklyn Poets.
Jason Koo is a second-generation Korean American poet, educator, editor and nonprofit director. He is the author of the poetry collections More Than Mere Light, America's Favorite Poem and Man on Extremely Small Island. His fourth full-length collection of poetry, No Rest, was one of the winners of the Diode Editions Book Prize and is forthcoming this spring. His work has been published in Best American Poetry 2022, Missouri Review, Poetry Northwest, Village Voice and Yale Review, among other places, and won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center and New York State Writers Institute. He is an associate teaching professor of English and the director of creative writing at Quinnipiac University and the founder and executive director of Brooklyn Poets.
D. Nurkse's twelfth poetry collection A Country of Strangers, a "new and selected," was published by Knopf in 2022. His poetry has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, three Pushcart Prizes, and appeared in six editions of Best American Poetry, The New Yorker, Poetry, and The Paris Review. He's also worked in human rights, served a term on the board of Amnesty International-USA, and taught at Rikers Island. A former poet laureate of Brooklyn, he lives in the borough with his wife Beth Bosworth and the wild puppy Zephyr.
Miller Oberman is a poet, editor and professor, and the author of The Unstill Ones, poems and translations, published as part of the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets, 2017. His second book of poems, Impossible Things is forthcoming from Duke UP in fall 2024. Miller is the recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, a 92Y Discovery Prize, and Poetry magazine’s John Frederick Nims Memorial Prize for Translation. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, London Review of Books, the Nation, Boston Review, Poem-a-Day, and Foglifter. Miller is an editor at Broadsided Press, which publishes monthly visual-literary collaborations as free posters for anyone to download and print. He teaches poetry workshops at Brooklyn Poets and directs the First-Year Writing program at Eugene Lang College at The New School. Miller lives with his family in Queens, New York.