Workshop:

We think of poems as a means of expression, but poems can also be a way to ask questions. They can help us investigate things we don’t understand. 

Atelier Rosal—a gallery, performance venue, and frame shop at 74 E. Cherry St., Rahway, NJ —is very excited to invite you to a two-hour community workshop with poet Patrick Rosal, where you’ll have the opportunity to generate some of your own writing based on the work of Aracelis Girmay, W.S. Merwin, Pablo Neruda, and Willie Perdomo. All levels are invited to a limited number of seats in the workshop.  If you would like to participate in the workshop, please RSVP to rosalwriting@gmail.com to reserve a space. We are happy to offer this workshop with a nationally known artist for a nominal sliding-scale fee—$5 to $25.

After the workshop, Atelier Rosal will hold an open mic, and Willie Perdomo — nationally acclaimed author hailing from East Harlem (aka El Barrio), New York — will read from his new book, The Crazy Bunch. Poet, professor, and publisher Roberto Carlos Garcia will introduce Mr. Perdomo.

Workshop begins promptly at 4:00 pm. Open mic and reading begin at 6:00 pm. Wine and cheese reception to follow.

Artists:

WILLIE PERDOMO is the author of The Crazy Bunch (Penguin Poets, 2019) The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon (Penguin Poets, 2014), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of the International Latino Book Award; Smoking Lovely (Rattapallax, 2004), winner of the PEN Open Book Award, and Where a Nickel Costs a Dime (Norton, 1996), a finalist for the Poetry Society of America Norma Farber First Book Award. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, Poetry, Bomb Magazine, and African Voices. He is currently a Lucas Arts Program Literary Fellow and teaches English at Phillips Exeter Academy.

PATRICK ROSAL is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Brooklyn Antediluvian, which was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award and winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets . Rosal’s other three books are Boneshepherds, My American Kundiman, a winner of the Association of Asian American Studies Book Award, and Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive, winner of the Asian American Writers Workshop Members’ Choice Award. The recipient of fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Fulbright Research Program, Rosal has taught at Princeton University, Sarah Lawrence College, the University of Texas, Austin, Bloomfield College, in addition to Kundiman’s summer writing retreat, carceral facilities in Chicago and Alabama, and youth programs throughout the country. He is an Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University-Camden.

Poet, storyteller, and essayist ROBERTO CARLOS GARCIA is a self-described “sancocho […] of provisions from the Harlem Renaissance, the Spanish Poets of 1929, the Black Arts Movement, the Nuyorican School, and the Modernists.” Garcia is rigorously interrogative of himself and the world around him, conveying “nakedness of emotion, intent, and experience,” and he writes extensively about the Afro-Latinx and Afro-diasporic experience. His second poetry collection, black / Maybe, is available from Willow Books.  Roberto’s first collection, Melancolía, is available from Červená Barva Press. His poems and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in Bettering American Poetry, The Root, Those People, Rigorous, Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Gawker, Barrelhouse, The Acentos Review, Lunch Ticket, and many others. He is founder of the cooperative press Get Fresh Books, LLC. A native New Yorker, Roberto holds an MFA in Poetry and Poetry in Translation from Drew University, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.