EventsThe New Social Environment#426

A Tribute to Jack Hirschman

Featuring Agneta Falk, Celia Hirschman, Andrei Codrescu, Tongo Eisen-Martin, Pierre Joris, Elaine Katzenberger, Devorah Major, Gail Mitchell, Alejandro Murguia, and Luis Rodriguez with Neeli Cherkovski

Wednesday, November 10, 2021 1 p.m. Eastern / 10 a.m. Pacific

These free events are produced by The Brooklyn Rail.

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A poetry reading in celebration of the life and legacy of poet Jack Hirschman (1933–2021) featuring Agneta Falk, Celia Hirschman, Andrei Codrescu, Tongo Eisen-Martin, Pierre Joris, Elaine Katzenberger, Devorah Major, Gail Mitchell, Alejandro Murguia, and Luis Rodriguez in conversation with Neeli Cherkovski.

In this Talk

This event will feature the debut of a photo essay on Jack Hirschman by Bay Area photographer Steven C. Wilson.

Sarah Riggs

Writer and artist Sarah Riggs is the author most recently of The Nerve Epistle, a book of letter poems newly out with Roof Books this November 2021. Her translation from the French of Etel Adnan’s TIME with Nightboat won the Griffin International Poetry Prize and the Best Translated Book Award in 2020. Riggs is also the producer of Outrider, a forthcoming film on and with the poet and performer Anne Waldman, working together with the director and cinematographer, Alystyre Julian. Riggs is a podcaster of Invitation to the Species with Tamaas, and has a daily artistic practice of working with ink and acrylic. She lives in Brooklyn with her partner Omar Berrada, and their two daughters.

https://sarahriggs.org/

Safaa Fathy

Poet, filmmaker, and essayist Safaa Fathy was born in Egypt and obtained her PhD from the Sorbonne in Paris in 1993. She has been Director of Programme at the International College of Philosophy (2010–2016). She wrote Ordalie and Terreur with an introduction by Jacques Derrida, with whom she signed Tourner les mots. Her most recent poetry books are Revolution goes through walls (SplitLevel ed.) and A name to the sea (Dar Al Nahda). Her last play is Aquarius, in Sillas en la frontera. Her last films are Mohammad saved from the waters, Derrida’s elsewhere, and Nom à la mer. Her most recent essays are "Au nom de la Mural" (Europe N. 1053-1053) and "De mur en mur" (rue Descartes N.92).

http://safaafathy.org/en/

Alisha Mascarenhas

Poet, teacher, and literary translator Alisha Mascarenhas is most recently the author of Contagion Fields, published with the Belladonna* 2021 chaplet series. Alisha is co-editor of READ: A Journal of Inter-Translation, and lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Cole Swensen

Photo by Anthony Hayward

Cole Swensen is the author of twenty volumes of poetry, most recently And And And (Shearsman Books, 2023), which was long-listed for the Griffin Poetry Prize, and a collection of critical essays, Noise That Stays Noise. A book of hybrid poem-essays, Art in Time, was published by Nightboat in 2021. A former Guggenheim Fellow, she has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the LA Times Book Award and has been awarded the Iowa Poetry Prize, the SF State Poetry Center Book Award, and the National Poetry Series. She has also translated over twenty volumes of poetry, prose, and art criticism from French and won the 2024 ALTA National Translation Award and the 2025 Stephen Mitchell Translation Award.

We’d like to thank The Marion Boulton Kippy Stroud Foundation and Teiger Foundation for making these conversations possible, and for their support of our growing archive 🌈✨