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Join Radical Ecology here at The Box where they’ll be introducing poet and activist Alexis Pauline Gumbs - critically acclaimed biographer of the iconic writer and civil rights campaigner Audre Lorde - and artist and 2022 Turner Prize nominee Ingrid Pollard. Listen to a reading from Survival is a Promise followed by a walking tour and discussion around the exhibition Land Sea Sky: Ingrid Pollard, JMW Turner & Vija Celmins. For the tour, Alexis and Ingrid will be joined by art curator Terah Walkup to explore the works of these artists, connected through their mutual fascination with the natural world – something which Lorde also shared.
Lorde’s understanding of survival was not simply about getting through to the other side of oppression or being resilient in the face of cancer. It was about the total stakes of what it means to be in relationship with a planet in transformation. Possibly the focus on Lorde’s quotable essays, to the neglect of her complex poems, has led us to ignore her deep engagement with the natural world, the planetary dynamics of geology, meteorology, and biology. For her, ecological images are not simply metaphors but rather literal guides to how to be of earth on earth, and how to survive—to live the ethics that a Black feminist lesbian warrior poetics demands.
About the speakers
Alexis Pauline Gumbs is the first researcher to explore the full depths of Lorde’s manuscript archives, illuminates the eternal life of Lorde. Her life and work become more than a sound bite; they become a cosmic force, teaching us the grand contingency of life together on earth. Gumbs is a poet, scholar and activist. She has published several books, including Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity, and Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals, which won a Whiting Award in non-fiction. In 2023, Gumbs received a Windham Campbell Prize for her ‘luminous, visionary poetry’.
Ingrid Pollard, MBE is a photographer, media artist and researcher. She is a graduate of the London College of Printing and Derby University. Ingrid has developed a social practice concerned with representation, history and landscape with reference to race, difference and the materiality of lens based media. She lives and works in Northumbria, UK. She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2022 and was awarded the Freelands Award in 2023 and the Hasselblad Award for photography in 2024.
Standard - £ 10 + donation
Concession / Members - £ 8 + donation
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Tavistock Place, PL1 1 Plymouth, United Kingdom, Plymouth Social Club, Tavistock Place, Plymouth, PL4 8AX, United Kingdom,Plymouth
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