The Poetry Project

On June 19th, Queer|Art and The Poetry Project co-present MARSHA!, an intimate evening with artist, filmmaker, author and Multi-Year QAM Mentor Tourmaline in celebration of her newest book. The event will include an author reading of MARSHA: The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson, the first definitive biography of the revolutionary activist. Afterwards, Tourmaline will be joined by Egyptt LaBeija for a moderated talkback, and the evening will conclude with live performances by guest stars. A rallying cry for liberation in celebration of Juneteenth, the program convenes artists, audiences, and community members to reflect on Marsha’s enduring impact and the continued work of Black trans artists and movement workers today.

poetryproject.org/events

In the last 15 months, we have witnessed innumerable scenes of IOF soldiers enjoying themselves on invaded land, dancing, role playing, laughing, defiling homes and places of worship, rummaging in personal drawers, playing back drone footage of mass detonations, setting up seating areas to watch the bombing of Gaza from the hills of the settlements. What do they enjoy so much and how is it related to all this death? How does barring the enjoyment of the other take the form of purposeful killing, maiming, or lynching? To think the repetitive appearance of these acts and these images, we may need to illuminate theories of enjoyment in psychoanalysis, and why the injunction to enjoy pertains to Law also in psychoanalysis. The manner in which enjoyment serves the (superego) injunction to obey and to enjoy that obedience to the point of transgressive obscenity. If every “wherever there is society, there is law” (Ubi societas ibi ius and Costas Douzinas adds: ubi jus ibi subjectum et societas) includes going over and above the call of law and duty (thanks to the phenomenon of repressive desublimation in socially-constituted Law), then enjoyment of obedience is possibly deranged transgression. The soldiers both succumb to and reproduce the horror that may emerge from Law and its transgression, and are thus both subjects and objects – not merely determined, unfree agents; victims of a military apparatus, or sociopathic aberrations. In the relation to the Other, between determinism and interpretation, one could ask, what ethics, what society, what law is before us? In this DIS/COURSE session we will probe together these thoughts, theories of enjoyment, and of death drive in relation to streamed detonations, desecrations, cheerings, and more by Israeli soldiers in Gaza and Lebanon.

Some readings will be assigned and the session will be a combination of lecture, reading and seminar discussion. Capped at 30.

This Dis/Course Workshop will take place virtually on Saturday, May 31 at noon.

poetryproject.org/learning

Emily XYZ and Myers Bartlett perform works from the vinyl LP OMSHIVA MICHIGAN — Poems for 2 Voices by Emily XYZ, commissioned by the Poetry Project with funding from the Axe-Houghton Foundation. Please join us in celebrating the release of their new LP!

Friday, May 30, 8pm in the Parish Hall at St Mark's

poetryproject.org/events

This event will also be livestreamed for free on the Project's YouTube channel.