POETRY & STRUGGLE with Mark Nowak

Thursday, May 12 - 7 PM

POETRY & STRUGGLE with Mark Nowak

AT THE AK PRESS WAREHOUSE



Poet and labor activist Mark Nowak will read from his new book of poetry Shut Up Shut Down and will discuss the relationship between his writing and his labor organizing. Mark will be joined by several Bay Area poet-activists (including David Buuck and Dennis Somera), who will also read, and then participate in a roundtable discussion of poetry's role in class, race, gender, and other struggles.



ON THE BOOK:

Shut Up Shut Down is a riveting collection of poetic plays and photo-documentary poems that exposes the human cost of corporate greed and gives voice to the growing crisis faced in communities across America. Here's what the critics say...



Amiri Baraka: "We get a sharp eye, a literary and philosophical broadening of what used to be labeled 'working class poetry'...deepened with a hard but contemporary lyric and narrative....A much needed parade."



Adrienne Rich: "Nowak is a highly gifted and conscious artist, carrying, like the oldest bards, a group narrative which must be told if his listeners are to understand who they are and on what their lives depend.--and this, in our time, means all of us."



Dave Roediger: "Elegant and inventive...Songs and statistics mix promiscuously in verses deeply informed by a knowledge of labor history and an ear for working class speech. This is a work as powerful in its hope as in its indictment of misery."



ON THE AUTHOR:

Mark Nowak is author of the critically acclaimed debut book of poems, Revenants, editor of XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics, and co-editor of Visit Teepee Town: Native Writings After the Detours. He grew up in Buffalo, New York, and now lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he is active in the labor movement.