Diana Arterian Agrippina the Younger in Conversation at Womb House Books

Diana Arterian and J. Michael Martinez will discuss Diana's new book of poetry, Agrippina the Younger

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Agrippina the Younger follows one woman’s study of another, separated by thousands of miles and two millennia but bound by a shared sense of powerlessness. Agrippina was a daughter in a golden political family, destined for greatness—but she hungered for more power than women were allowed. Exhausted by the misogyny of the present, Diana Arterian reaches into the past to try to understand the patriarchal systems of today. In lyric verse and prose poems, she traces Agrippina’s rise, interrogating a life studded with intrigue, sex, M**der, and manipulation. Arterian eagerly pursues Agrippina through texts, ruins, and films, exhuming the hidden details of the ancient noblewoman’s life. These poems consider the valences of patriarchy, power, and the archive to try to answer the question: How do we recover a woman erased by history?

DIANA ARTERIAN is the author of the poetry collection Playing Monster :: Seiche and has twice been a finalist for the National Poetry Series. Her writing has appeared in BOMB, The Georgia Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, and elsewhere. A poetry editor for Noemi Press, Arterian writes The Annotated Nightstand column at Lit Hub. She lives in Los Angeles.

J. Michael Martinez is the author of four collections of poetry, including Heredities, which received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, and Museum of the Americas, which was a winner of the National Poetry Series Competition and long-listed for the 2018 National Book Award in Poetry. His latest work is Tarta Americana, a finalist for the California Book Award.

Event Venue

Womb House Books, Temescal Alley, Oakland, United States