Upcoming Events
Follow Jabari Asim’s Event Calendar to stay up-to-date on appearances and talks.
Past Events
Stop and Frisk Book Launch
Friday, June 19, 2020 – 7:00pm
Jabari Asim with Porsha Olayiwola, Stop & Frisk: A Juneteenth Poetry Reading
Porter Square Books welcomes you to join us for a virtual Juneteenth poetry reading to celebrate the release of Jabari Asim’s newest poetry collection, Stop & Frisk: American Poems, with Porsha Olayiwola (i shimmer sometimes, too), hosted on Crowdcast. This event is free and open to all.
Register to join the event on Crowdcast here: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/StopAndFrisk
In Stop and Frisk, Jabari Asim ruthlessly interrogates entrenched injustice and its insidious echoes. Part rap sheet, part concept album, Asim lays down tracks that add conviction to our collective broken record: What could be more American than pretending truths were self-evident when they seldom were? Drawing defiant inspiration from the news and the Blues, these poems arrest our attention and burn grooves into us. These starkly revelatory poems expose the dark heart of our nation and call for a reckoning—the only way out before everything breaks / into hurt, noise, and ever after.
Porsha Olayiwola’s debut poetry collection i shimmer sometimes, too soars with the power and presence of live performance. These poems dip their hands into the fabric of black womanhood and revel in it. Shimmer establishes Olayiwola firmly in the lineage of black queer poetics, celebrating the work done by generations of poets from Audre Lorde to Danez Smith. Each poem is a gentle breaking and an inventive reconstruction. This is a book of self and community-care―in pursuit of building a world that will not only keep you alive but will keep you joyful.
