Day: 3/4
Time: 18.00-19.30
Place: The Library in Hägerstensåsens medborgarhus
 
Please join us for a reading and discussion between Marcelo Morales and Elizabeth Clark Wessel on their recent books Star-Spangled Brand, translated by Kristin Dykstra, and None of It Belongs to Me.
 
Cuban poet Marcelo Morales and Stockholm-based US American poet Elizabeth Clark Wessel will discuss and read from their most recent books. Their conversation will range from historical memory as a source, to documentary practices, to translation as poetic practice, to borders, and elsewhere.
 
Marcelo Morales began to write at the end of the “Special Period,” a euphemistic phrase referring to a time of economic, political, and social crisis in Cuba resulting from the collapse of the socialist field. In his poetry, Morales sifts through historical, political, economic, and material conditions that shape human experience. El mecanismo mudo, his extended collection of new prose poetry of which The Star-Spangled Brand is one segment, is forthcoming from Varasek Ediciones in Madrid. Morales is also the author of The World as Presence / El mundo como ser, a bilingual poetry edition from the U. of Alabama Press (2016, longlisted for the National Translation Award). His previous books of prose poetry include El círculo mágico, El mundo como objeto, Cinema, and Materia, among others; his novel, La espiral, appeared in 2006. He lives in Havana. BOMB published a 2017 interview in which Morales discusses writing, as well as his own photographs (https://bombmagazine.org/articles/marcelo-morales/).
 
Elizabeth Clark Wessel (b. USA) is a poet, translator, and small press editor living in Stockholm, Sweden.