Note: This video contains mature content and explicit language.
Combining poetry, objects, and video, (Don’t Be Absurd) Alice in Parts is an immersive installation by multi-genre writer and performer Anastacia-Reneé that offers a rageful meditation on gentrification—of neighborhoods and its insidious effects on the body—as seen through the eyes of her multilayered and witty character Alice Metropolis.
On Saturday, March 6, 2021, four of Anastacia-Reneé’s most beloved poets read their works in engagement with and in response to (Don’t Be Absurd) Alice in Parts at the Frye. This reading, one of two presented in conjunction with the exhibition, is interspersed with the poets’ reflections on the exhibitions and the ideas that fuel their practices.
ABOUT THE POETS
JP Howard is an educator, literary activist, curator and community builder. Her debut poetry collection, SAY/MIRROR (The Operating System), was a Lambda Literary finalist. She is also the author of bury your love poems here (Belladonna*) and co-editor of Sinister Wisdom Journal Black Lesbians--We Are the Revolution! JP was a featured author in Lambda Literary’s LGBTQ Writers in Schools program and was a Split this Rock Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism finalist. JP is featured in the Lesbian Poet Trading Card Series from Headmistress Press and has received fellowships and/or grants from Cave Canem, VONA, Lambda Literary, Astraea and Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC). She curates Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon, a NY-based forum offering writers a monthly venue to collaborate. Her poetry and essays have appeared in The Slowdown podcast, The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day Series, Anomaly, Apogee Journal, The Feminist Wire, Split this Rock, Muzzle Magazine, and The Best American Poetry Blog. Her poetry is widely anthologized. JP is one of three current general Poetry Editors for Women's Studies Quarterly (WSQ) and Editor-At-Large of Mom Egg Review VOX online.
Bettina Judd is an interdisciplinary writer, artist, and performer whose research focus is on Black women's creative production and our use of visual art, literature, and music to develop feminist thought through affective registers. She is currently Assistant Professor of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington. Her poems and essays have appeared in Feminist Studies, Torch, The Offing, Meridians and other journals and anthologies. Her collection of poems titled patient. (2014) which tackles the history of medical experimentation on and display of Black women won the Black Lawrence Press Hudson Book Prize in 2013.
Derrick Weston Brown holds an MFA from American University. He is the founding Poet-In-Residence of Busboys and Poets and a graduate of the Cave Canem and VONA workshops. His work has been published in Colorlines and Tidal Basin Review. His first collection of poems Wisdom Teeth was released in 2011 by PM Press. His second collection, On All Fronts, was published by Upper Rubber Boot Press in March 2019. He resides in Mount Rainier, MD.
I.S. Jones is a queer American Nigerian poet and music journalist. She is a Graduate Fellow with The Watering Hole and holds fellowships from Callaloo, BOAAT Writer’s Retreat, and Brooklyn Poets. I. S. hosts a month-long online workshop every April called The Singing Bullet. I.S. coedited The Young African Poets Anthology: The Fire That Is Dreamed Of (Agbowó, 2020) and served as the inaugural nonfiction guest editor for Lolwe. She is a Book Editor with Indolent Books, Editor at 20.35 Africa: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, freelances for Complex, Earmilk, NBC News THINK, and elsewhere. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming in Guernica, Washington Square Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Hobart Pulp, The Rumpus, The Offing, Shade Literary Arts, Blood Orange Review, Honey Literary and elsewhere. Her work was chosen by Khadijah Queen as a finalist for the 2020 Sublingua Prize for Poetry. She is an MFA candidate in Poetry at University of Wisconsin–Madison where she was the Inaugural 2019–2020 Kemper K. Knapp University Fellowship recipient. Her forthcoming chapbook Spells Of My Name was selected by Newfound for the Emerging Poets Series.
Explore this collection of recommended reading for the exhibition, which includes the poets from this program, available for purchase at the Museum Store’s website.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Looking for more poetry? Check out the virtual opening for (Don’t Be Absurd) Alice in Parts, which featured a choreopoem inspired by the exhibition’s central character Alice Metropolis as well as the spirit and work of Audre Lorde. The choreopoem was read by a chorus of seven artists and poets selected by Anastacia-Reneé. Note: This video contains mature content and explicit language.
Can’t see the exhibition in person? Explore a 3D tour of the immersive installation. If you prefer video to 3D, we invite you to view this this special tour of the exhibition, narrated by the restless, late-night thoughts and fears of Alice Metropolis. Note: This video contains mature content and explicit language.
Visit the calendar page on our website to learn about and register for upcoming virtual programs offered by the Frye Art Museum.