Subtexts The Anti-literary/Literary Poetry Reading at Teatro Paraguas

Blurring boundaries through verse

In the vast and multifaceted world of poetry, “good” is subjective. Academia has long been a bastion of what is known as literary poetry, which the Ivory Tower deems good, while “the streets,” wherever they may be, are the home of spoken word, political poetry, and even Instagram poetry (where the streets resemble a series of tubes). In decades past, the divide between these camps has been wide and deep, and smacktalk between the genres was common. Street poets often called literary poetry boring, seeing it as written solely for other academics rather than average readers, while many literary poets considered spoken word lacking in craft or seriousness.

The Anti-literary/Literary Poetry reading with Darryl Lorenzo Wellington, Israel Francisco Haros Lopez, and Diane Castiglioni — 5:30 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 14, at Teatro Paraguas (3205 Calle Marie, 505-424-1601) — takes on the issues of literary and critical standards and how they are important to poetry traditions but definitely structured by race- and class-based hierarchies in western culture. The event is also a chapbook launch for

Life’s Prisoners (Flowstone Press), for which Wellington received the 2017 Turtle Island Poetry Award. Wellington has written for

The Nation, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post, among other journalistic outlets. His poems have appeared in such print and online publications as Drunken Boat and

The Boston Review. His work is narrative and content-driven, populated by abstract descriptions of internal movement. Among his politically oriented poems are “Concerning the Recent Brutality,” in which he writes: “Cops finger me like an idle/Parliament. An off-duty/ throwaway smoke/spent then discarded.//Tobacco, still smooth —/soothing, breathable,/all smokes considered.” Admission to the Anti-literary/Literary Poetry reading is free. For more information, visit www.teatroparaguas.org.

— Jennifer Levin