QUIET: POEMS | A Busboys and Poets Books Presentation
Date and Time
Feb 5, 2024 6:00 pm
Location
Takoma
235 Carroll St NW, Washington, District of Columbia, 20012
Feb 5, 2024 6:00 pm
Takoma
“Victoria Adukwei Bulley’s stunning poems draw you in with their melodious versatility, intellect and dexterity; perfectly embody the political through the personal; and are freedom-loving shapeshifters constantly changing form and animating ideas and language to surprising effect. This is her debut collection, but she arrives fully formed.”—Bernardine Evaristo, Booker Prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other
A Black British poet making her thrilling American debut explores the importance of “quiet” in producing forms of community, resistance, and love. How does one encounter meaning amid so many kinds of noise? What is quiet when it isn’t silence? Where does quiet exist—and what liberating potential might it hold? These poems dwell on ideas of black interiority, intimacy, and selfhood, and they celebrate as fiercely as they mourn. With a metaphysical edge and a formal restlessness attuned to both the sonics and the inadequacies of language, Quiet navigates the tension between the impulse to guard one’s inner life and the knowledge that, as Audre Lorde writes, “your silence will not protect you.”
Victoria Adukwei Bulley is joining us on the Busboys stage to share her intimate and highly lauded release, QUIET, in conversation with fellow poet Camonghne Felix. Copies of QUIET and DYSCALCULIA will be available for purchase during and after the event, and both authors will be signing following the program.
This event is free and open to all. Our program begins at 6:00 pm, and will be followed by an audience Q&A. Copies of QUIET: POEMS will be available for purchase before and after the event. Please note that this event is in person and will not be livestreamed
We ask that guests RSVP in order to receive direct updates about the event from Busboys and Poets Books
Victoria Adukwei Bulley is a poet, writer, and artist whose work has appeared widely in publications including the London Review of Books, LitHub, and The Atlantic. She is the winner of an Eric Gregory Award, and her critically acclaimed debut poetry book, QUIET, won the Folio Prize for Poetry, the John Pollard International Poetry Prize, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. QUIET is published by Faber in the UK and in North America by Alfred A. Knopf.
Camonghne Felix, poet and essayist, is the author of DYSCALCULIA: A LOVE STORY OF EPIC MISCALCULATION (One World, 2023), which was hailed by TIME Magazine and Vogue as one of the most anticipated books of 2023 and top memoirs of 2023. Her poetry debut BUILD YOURSELF A BOAT (Haymarket Books, 2019), was long-listed for the 2019 National Book Award in Poetry, shortlisted for the PEN/Open Book Awards, and shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Awards. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Academy of American Poets, Harvard Review, LitHub, The New Yorker, PEN America, Poetry Magazine, Freeman’s Journal and elsewhere. Her next full length work, LET THE POETS GOVERN, is forthcoming from One World, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
