9th Ave Green Apple Poetry Night w/ Kaveh Akbar (SF)

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Join us on Thursday, August 5 at 6pm PT when Kaveh Akbar reads from his latest poetry collection, Pilgrim Bell, in-person at 9th Ave! MASKS REQUIRED

You can watch the livestream of this event online by registering at the link below
Zoom Registration
https://us02web.zoom.us/…/reg…/WN_LkAVIbOeRpqn-rACAEZ62g

Praise for Pilgrim Bell

“Kaveh Akbar exquisitely and tenaciously braids astonishment and atonement into a singular lyric voice . . . intensely inventive and original.” —Frank Bidart

“[Akbar’s] poems have as much audacity as humility, a rare mix of openness in a time of flinching anxiety.” —francine j. harris

“Akbar’s poems offer readers, religious or not, a way to cultivate faith in times of deepest fear.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

About Pilgrim Bell

Kaveh Akbar’s exquisite, highly anticipated follow-up to Calling a Wolf a Wolf

With formal virtuosity and ruthless precision, Kaveh Akbar’s second collection takes its readers on a spiritual journey of disavowal, fiercely attendant to the presence of divinity where artifacts of self and belonging have been shed. How does one recover from addiction without destroying the self-as-addict? And if living justly in a nation that would see them erased is, too, a kind of self-destruction, what does one do with the body’s question, “what now shall I repair?” Here, Akbar responds with prayer as an act of devotion to dissonance—the infinite void of a loved one’s absence, the indulgence of austerity, making a life as a Muslim in an Islamophobic nation—teasing the sacred out of silence and stillness.

Richly crafted and generous, Pilgrim Bell’s linguistic rigor is tuned to the register of this moment and any moment. As the swinging soul crashes into its limits, against the atrocities of the American empire, and through a profoundly human capacity for cruelty and grace, these brilliant poems dare to exist in the empty space where song lives—resonant, revelatory, and holy.

About Kaveh Akbar

Kaveh Akbar is the author of Calling a Wolf a Wolf and has received honors such as a Levis Reading Prize and multiple Pushcart Prizes. Born in Tehran, Iran, he teaches at Purdue University and in low-residency programs at Warren Wilson and Randolph Colleges.

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.