To close out National Poetry Month in April, NEW SUNS Community center is excited to present the Poetry is Not a Luxury full day festival. 

Here we borrow from Audre Lorde, the Black lesbian feminist poet warrior, who in her 1977 essay wrote, “Poetry is not a luxury. 

 It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the

quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and

change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.”

Throughout the day we will engage with the work of poetry through film, body movement, clay play, and creative writing. 

We will have a screening of the biopic film Neruda about the Chilean poet and communist activist Pablo Neruda. This will be followed by a discussion, and a somatic Dance Improv class taught by our Community Center Steward Taylor. Our brilliant ceramics teacher A.J will then facilitate a grief-making ceramics class, and we will end the day with a poetry writing and reading exercise facilitated by Shingai. 

Who is invited? 

Everyone who wants to contend with the place of poetry in resistance building and community survival. This will be a BIPOC centered space.

There will be snacks and drinks available.