POETRY READING
Courtney LeBlanc
Alexa Patrick
Wednesday, November 15, 2023 at 7:00 pm
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
(RSVP required)
Courtney LeBlanc is the author of the full-length collections Her Whole Bright Life; Exquisite Bloody, Beating Heart; and Beautiful & Full of Monsters. She is the Arlington County Poet Laureate, a Virginia Center for Creative Arts fellow, and the founder and editor-in-chief of Riot in Your Throat, an independent poetry press.
Alexa Patrick is a vocalist and poet from Connecticut. She holds fellowships from Cave Canem, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and more. Alexa is currently the Programs Director for Shout Mouse Press. In spring 2023, Alexa made her stage production debut as Un/Sung in the opera We Shall Not Be Moved, directed by Kennedy Center honors awardee Bill T. Jones. You may find her work in publications including The Adroit Journal, CRWN Magazine, and The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic. Her debut collection Remedies for Disappearing will be published by Haymarket Books in June.
Called "hauntingly beautiful" by the Southern Review of Books, LeBlanc's poems explore themes of self-awareness and loss, as in these lines from the poem I Don't Eat After 8 pm:
I once read you shouldn’t
eat after 8pm if you want to lose
weight and I, a woman who hated
her body for a decade, always wanted
less to hate. The week my dad died
I ate my mother’s pretzel dessert
with a spoon, pan held beneath
my chin like a trough, the salty-sweet
combination filling my belly with
calories I couldn’t begin to count.
Patrick's poems seek connection while calling for movement toward social change, as in this excerpt from The Black Men Outside the Waterfront Safeway:
are a steady ballet of hands,
cipher of dab and dozen
transform Southwest street corner
into Carnegie Hall.
I walk by. They quiet,
shield me from what profanity
fills the gaps in their teeth,
those golden smiles, the slick
tongues that make them.
The reading will be followed by a reception and book signing.
Doors open at 6:30 pm and program will begin 7:00 pm.
Discounted parking available 2001 Pennsylvania Ave.
