Puerto Rican poet, performer, professor, and polemicist Urayoán Noel will offer two readings: first, he will read excerpts from Qué haré con mi lugar en el cielo, a new collection of poems by Wingston González, along with Noel’s translation of his work. These poems were inspired by the sculptures of Naufus Ramírez Figueroa, reflecting on the figure of the silleros in colonial Latin America. Noel will then share work from his own practice, rooted in an ongoing dialogue with González.
Please note: This program will be a mixture of Spanish and English.
Noel’s readings are a part of the Biennial’s weekly Performance and Reading Program: Isonomia in Toronto, a series which takes place within Adrian Blackwell’s two interrelated structures at 259 Lake Shore Blvd E and the Small Arms Inspection Building. Invited guests include poet CAConrad, artists Camilo Godoy and Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Apache violinist Laura Ortman, Sister Co-Resister, and percussionist Marshall Trammell.
Image: Qué haré con mi lugar en el cielo, courtesy Wingston González.
Performance Program: Isonomia in Toronto
Small Arms Inspection Building (2019)
1352 Lakeshore Road East
Mississauga ON
L5E 1E9
November 9
Bios
Urayoán Noel (born Santurce, Puerto Rico; lives in South Bronx, NY, USA) is a writer, critic, performer, translator and intermedia artist. He is an associate professor of English and Spanish at New York University, and also teaches at Stetson University’s MFA of the Americas. Noel is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Buzzing Hemisphere/Rumor Hemisférico (University of Arizona Press, 2015), as well as the critical study In Visible Movement: Nuyorican Poetry from the Sixties to Slam (University of Iowa Press, 2014), winner of the LASA Latina/o Studies Book Award. As translator, his works include the bilingual edition Architecture of Dispersed Life: Selected Poetry by Pablo de Rokha (Shearsman Books, 2018), longlisted for the Best Translated Book Award, and the chapbook No Budu Please by Wingston González (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2018). His non-print work ranges from durational performance and text-sound-video installations to collaborative projects with musician/composer Monxo López, artist Martha Clippinger, and dancer/choreographer Alethea Pace, among others. Noel has received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Howard Foundation, and CantoMundo.
Wingston González (born in Livingston, Guatemala; lives in Guatemala City, Guatemala) is a textual producer and member of the collective La Retaguardia, in Guatemala City. His published work includes traslaciones (2015 Luis Cardoza y Aragón Mesoamerican poetry prize) and No Budu Please (Ugly Duckling Presse; tr. by Urayoán Noel). Qué haré con mi lugar en el cielo is part of a series of collaborations with Naufus Ramírez Figueroa that completes the trilogy started with lugar de consuelo / Heart of the scarecrow (2016) and continued in La playa espera por vos / Linnæus in Tenebris (2017).