Join poets Lara Atallah, DeeSoul Carson, Noah Arhm Choi, and Ricardo Alberto Maldonado at the Brooklyn Poets Poetry Festival for a panel on the responsibilities of language production under empire.

Is language the box we find ourselves locked in or the key to its escape? What does it mean to write against oppression, against trauma, against empire, against our own histories—using the same language that created them? What tension do we hold when we write for our survival using the same words that form legislation that renders us at best unimportant, and at worst, nonexistent. In this panel, we’ll explore a question “What does it mean to be a poet working in a language, a medium, a nation, that can produce this?” raised by Kaveh Akbar with poets that poke and pry at the edge of language. We’ll learn from poets working in translation, found materials, multiple languages and more what it means to work in a language that could produce this and what opportunities and responsibilities we have in doing so.