Description
Poetry. Women's Studies. Environmental Studies. "If in Sarah Riggs' POMME & GRANITE, language shimmers as register of pure light, EAVESDROP's iridescence signs the stakes of dance. Each sequence, in deploying fresh ways to balance language differences, brings the ear in touch with the whole of thinking bodies, bodies that are elements of the sky — yet knowing when to hit the soundboard of meaning, hard. The stakes are love and the existential tremour of our moment, culled in passim (and in passion) from speech on three continents and dreams and ancient history; or, yet, eavesdropped from interior' and 'exterior' gleanings swimming under a sky full of drones... This exquisite pas-de-trois — engaging, as text or subtext, English, French, Arabic, moves toward a stunning finale, hued in the stark black and white of certain cemeteries." —Gail Scott
"Sarah Riggs' EAVESDROP murmurs the cosmic rotation of hours and instants. It whispers in many tongues, chants in numerous voices, hears the howls from our history. It dives into black holes; the extermination of Native Americans and slavery. She names and draws. 'Even the stones are crying from what has happened,' harmonizes Riggs with a Syrian refugee. The hour and the eye, the ear and the word are one in that cosmology where before history befell, creation set the universe in motion. Riggs reaches this point, to start again. EAVESDROP is hospitable to our Tragedy, yet it loops in its wanderings in our time space and harvests all the hope and affirmation. She is in the inside of the inside where hours occur and times are mingled in the inward cosmology. She reaches the outside of the outside where she states and acknowledges Earth's imminent disasters, voices fear and pronounces our impotence. In her call to women and children Sarah Riggs speaks to us all and incites us to action." —Safaa Fathy
Author Bio
Sarah Riggs is a poet working on an "Invitation to the Species" in the form of a podcast/video/book with artists and intellectuals, on the relations of people to each other and the earth. This work draws on her social circles of the last seventeen years with her partner Omar Berrada between Morocco, France and the U.S, and their organization Tamaas, which means "connection" in Arabic. Its new educational U.S. branch is "Earth Arts Justice." EAVESDROP (Chax Press, 2020) is her sixth book of poetry in English. She is also the author of POMME & GRANITE (1913 Press, 2015), AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ENVELOPES (Burning Deck, 2012), 60 TEXTOS (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010), WATERWORK (Chax Press, 2007), and the translator of Etel Adnan's TIME (Nightboat Books, 2019) along with five other poetry books. Riggs' THE NERVE EPISTLE is forthcoming with Roof Books, 2021. As a professor, she has taught at Columbia and NYU in Paris, as well as Pratt in Brooklyn. Her film productions have shown at the Berlin Film Festival, the Jeu de Paume, the Tate Modern, Anthology Film Archive and other venues. Her drawings and paintings have shown at galleries internationally, and often are in conversation with her writing. Riggs' book of essays Word Sightings (Routledge, 2002) sketched maps for her pursuits, which seem to be about the eye and the pen, and are, it turns out, mostly about listening to others and our collective synergies on this planet.
Author City: BROOKLYN, NY USA