About this Event
Event guidelines:
- All attendees are strongly encouraged to wear a face mask at all times.
- Tickets are limited to restrict capacity at our store, and each ticket will include either a copy of the featured book or a $10 Books Are Magic gift card.
- Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.
- A signing will follow the talk.
- Home address is collected for contact tracing purposes; it will not be used otherwise.
- The event will also be livestreamed for free here: https://youtube.com/live/4Ad9GvjdQ4o
- As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we'll work it out.
If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact [email protected].
Find Me In the Feral Pockets: Poems from the Gowanus Interregnum provides an amphibious tour of a peculiar New York City neighborhood in transition with the Gowanus Canal reflecting hardships and catharsis.
Poet Brad Vogel paddles through pollution, relationships, environmental concerns, accreted layers of history, and even humor as he distills Gowanus into a collection of unique, sometimes bracing poems. The collection captures the values of "the unplanned place" in the urban landscape and the individual mind of a city dweller. A quirky, flood-prone realm on the brink, Gowanus comes to life through an array of lenses, from floating condoms to street-end weeds, from resilient fish to unknown organisms in the polluted muck, a weird world is found to be worth noticing, worth loving.
The book features an interesting, if not unique, element: a poetic heat map that indicates the precise geographic origins of each poem in the collection in the context of the neighborhood.
Brad Vogel is the author of the poetry collections Find Me In the Feral Pockets (2024) and Broad Meadow Bird (Euphrosine Publishing, 2015). Profiled in The New Yorker this spring, his poetry has been published in Smartish Pace, Freshwater Review, Eel Pit, SIZL, and more. His writing has appeared in The New York Times. A finalist for the Erskine J. Poetry Prize, Brad coordinates the NYC Poets Afloat residency and reading series aboard ships. He served as Captain of the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club from 2017-2022 and runs both the annual Gowanus Dawn Reading as part of the Brooklyn Book Festival and the poetry series Gowanustasia. Brad enjoys wordplay, biodiversity, morning walks, and the decentralization of power.
Lillian Ruiz is a non-profit leader working at the intersection of information and social impact. As the founder and principal of Ci-X Strategies, she works with news outlets, foundations and mission-driven businesses to build a thriving public square that communicates respect, harmony and cohesion. Before launching Ci-X Strategies, Ruiz was COO at the National Trust for Local News, where she oversaw transformation investments to ensure communities across the nation kept local news in local hands. She is a long time Brooklyn resident, where she lives with her partner and their bonkers cat, Jake.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Books Are Magic Smith, 225 Smith Street, Brooklyn, United States
USD 10.89 to USD 21.78