Repolla Reading Series

JIAS is thrilled to announce the first iteration of the Repolla Reading Series - (Close)Reading & Ritual - curated by feminist writer, poet and JIAS Global Blackness Fellow Maneo Mohale.

What work can poetry do, in the endlessly genocidal present, and the burning after-now? How can poetry teach us not to look away? And not only that, how can poetry teach us to look closer?

In each of the five sessions (July-October) participants will engage with the work of one poet, and one poem, from one region currently affected by genocide and imperialist violence. In these close gatherings, we hope to foster rituals of solidarity, care, rage, hope and imagination within the otherwise spaces poetry affords us. Each session will be further supported by a curated selection of transdisciplinary resources and associated practices of black-being-well (extending the politics of vigilance, community and care foregrounded in our 2023 Summer School programme).

The Repolla Reading Series follows closely in the footsteps of grounded, innovative queer reading series such as REVERB and The Lesser Violence Reading Group, , and takes further inspiration from current activations of poetry in the face of genocidal catastrophe, such as the 2024 Freedom Boat intervention at the Venice Biennale preview week, and the accompanying Gaza Reader, Vol 1. (Poetry) publication, produced by Artists Against Apartheid, Bidoun; WAWOG (Writers Against the War on Gaza); and the Kamel Lazaar Foundation. Extending this activation and activism of the poetic, Repolla is a series oriented towards action, and underpinned by creative expression, invention, trans-national solidarities, and community magic.

On (Close)Reading & Ritual - a note from Maneo:

We hold it close and true, that “art and ritual are related”.* We nod, and breathe alongside CAConrad, who, “cannot stress enough how much this mechanistic world, as it becomes more and more efficient, resulting in ever-increasing brutality, has required me to FIND MY BODY to FIND MY PLANET in order to find my poetry”.** We also recognise the power of poetry as enunciated sound, as text in air & rhythm, as activated thought-sensation. And as such, over the course of a season, we will gather in spaces both physical and virtual, in the hopes of (re)linking the sonic & the somatic; building and nurturing trans-national solidarities; and activating poetry in the pursuit of a better world.

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* "Shopping Bag, Spirits and Freeway Fetishes: Reflections on Ritual Space" dir. by Barbara McCullough
** "DON'T TAKE ANY SHIT!! A (Soma)tic Poetics Primer by CAConra