Porter Square Books welcomes you to join us for a virtual Juneteenth poetry reading to celebrate the release of Jabari Asim's newest poetry collection, Stop & Frisk: American Poems, with Porsha Olayiwola (i shimmer sometimes, too), hosted on Crowdcast.

This event is free and open to all; any contributions via Crowdcast to this event will be donated to Black Lives Matter Boston.

In Stop and Frisk, Jabari Asim ruthlessly interrogates entrenched injustice and its insidious echoes. Part rap sheet, part concept album, Asim lays down tracks that add conviction to our collective broken record: What could be more American than pretending truths were self-evident when they seldom were? Drawing defiant inspiration from the news and the Blues, these poems arrest our attention and burn grooves into us. These starkly revelatory poems expose the dark heart of our nation and call for a reckoning—the only way out before everything breaks / into hurt, noise, and ever after.

Porsha Olayiwola's debut poetry collection i shimmer sometimes, too soars with the power and presence of live performance. These poems dip their hands into the fabric of black womanhood and revel in it. Shimmer establishes Olayiwola firmly in the lineage of black queer poetics, celebrating the work done by generations of poets from Audre Lorde to Danez Smith. Each poem is a gentle breaking and an inventive reconstruction. This is a book of self and community-care―in pursuit of building a world that will not only keep you alive but will keep you joyful.

What is Juneteenth? Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States.

Jabari Asim is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Creative Arts and the author of seven books for adults—including We Can’t Breathe: On Black Lives, White Lies, and the Art of Survival—and ten books for children. His poems are included in several anthologies, including Furious Flower: African American Poetry from the Black Arts Movement to the Present; Beyond the Frontier: African American Poetry for the 21st Century; and Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black Literature & Art. After more than a decade at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and The Washington Post, he now directs the MFA program at Emerson College.

Porsha Olayiwola is a native of Chicago who now resides in Boston. Olayiwola is a writer, performer, educator and curator who uses afro-futurism and surrealism to examine historical and current issues in the Black, woman, and queer diasporas. She is an Individual World Poetry Slam Champion and the artistic director at MassLEAP, a literary youth organization. Olayiwola is an MFA Candidate at Emerson College. Porsha Olayiwola is the author of i shimmer sometimes, too with Button Poetry and is the current poet laureate for the city of Boston.

This event is part of our Be the Change: Community Action series. A portion of Porter Square Books online sales for June 19th will be donated to Black Lives Matter Boston, along with any direct contributions from the audience via Crowdcast's Donate button.

PSB Presents Jabari Asim with Porsha Olayiwola, Stop & Frisk: A Juneteenth Poetry Reading