Name: CRUEL APRIL Poetry Reading
Start: 2026-04-08T17:30:00-04:00
End: 2026-04-08T19:30:00-04:00
Location: Syracuse University Art Museum

Point of Contact’s Cruel April Poetry Series returns to the SU Art Museum for an evening of powerful readings by Urayoán Noel, Stephen Kuusisto, and OlaRose Ndubuisi.
The 2026 program unfolds against the backdrop of the museum’s spring exhibition in connection with the Wynn Newhouse Awards, featuring nationally recognized artists with disabilities. The exhibition explores how artists navigate the art world—and the world at large—on their own terms, expanding our understanding of creativity through perspectives shaped by body, mind, culture, and history.
In this spirit, Cruel April 2026 celebrates poets who challenge convention and expand the boundaries of artistic expression.
Urayoán Noel, poet and scholar, is Associate Professor of English and Spanish at New York University. He is the author of In Visible Movement: Nuyorican Poetry from the Sixties to Slam (Iowa, 2014), the first book-length study of Nuyorican poetry, which received the LASA Latino Studies Book Award among other recognitions. His books of poetry include Buzzing Hemisphere/Rumor Hemisférico (2015) and Transversal (2021), both with the University of Arizona Press, the latter of which was a New York Public Library Book of the Year. Urayoán Noel’s work explores themes of neurodivergence, disabilities, migration, and language politics
Stephen Kuusisto, a poet, essayist, and Professor at Syracuse University where he is also Director of the Office of Interdisciplinary Programs at the Burton Blatt Institute. He has been blind since birth, and is known for illuminating the world through sound, intuition, and poetic vision. His collections Only Bread, Only Light (2000) and Letters to Borges (2013), both from Copper Canyon Press, affirm that perception transcends sight, inviting readers to encounter beauty through other senses. He is the author of the memoirs Have Dog, Will Travel (2018), Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening (2006), and Planet of the Blind (1998). His poems and essays have appeared in a number of periodicals and literary magazines, such as Harper’s, Poetry, and The New York Times Magazine.
OlaRose Ndubuisi is the 2024-2025 New York State Youth Poet Laureate, a distinction conferred by Urban Word and the Teachers and Writers Collaborative. She is known for using poetry to turn personal struggles with scoliosis into art. A premature birth survivor, she published six books by age 13 and is currently a Coronat Scholar at Syracuse University, pursuing biology and journalism. She is also a Prudential Emerging Visionaries award winner, and has been recognized for her advocacy, founding the “The Finding Scoliosis Kindly Project.” to support youth with scoliosis, alongside her work as an author and artist.
Together, their readings offer an extraordinary dialogue on visibility, belonging, and creative freedom—echoing the exhibition’s central message that disability is not a limitation but a vital source of perspective, resistance, and innovation.
Cruel April 2026 is presented with support from Syracuse University’s Humanities Center, the Disability Cultural Center, Poets and Writers, Tender Mag, and the New York State Council on the Arts.