About this Event
About the book:
Set within a Midwestern family home along the shores of Lake Michigan, Scrap Book draws on Marianne Hirsch's theory of postmemory: "the relationship of the second generation to powerful, often traumatic, experiences that preceded their birth but that were nevertheless transmitted to them so deeply." Interwoven with poems grounded in a familial archive--such as journal entries and Polaroids of Martino's father in Pr*son--the collection uses the idea of photographic development as a framework for exploring how insight into family history can emerge gradually, like an image appearing in a darkroom.
Through its use of ekphrasis and archival fragments, Scrap Book creates a textural interior landscape in which the speaker wrestles with how they see themselves and how they are seen by others. Ultimately, Scrap Book is a work of gathering and repair--a lyrical stitching-together of fragments in search of meaning. In reassembling the family archive, Martino opens a space for readers to do the same: to sift through memory, injury, and ego, and fashion from their own "scraps" a deeper understanding of what they carry.
About the author:
Nick Martino is a poet and teacher from Milwaukee who currently lives in LA. His poems have been published in Best New Poets, Narrative, Ninth Letter, The Boston Review, and The Southern Review, among others. A finalist for the 2024 Sewanee Review Poetry Prize, he holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, where he received the 2022 Excellence in Poetry Prize.
The conversation will be moderated by Victoria Newton Ford.
Victoria Newton Ford is a poet and essayist from Memphis, Tennessee. Her writing explores fungibility, violence, haunting, spectacles, intimacy, (re)memory, and death. She is an inaugural Writing Freedom Fellow, supported by Haymarket Books. Victoria has received support from Crosstown Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, TORCH Literary Arts, MacDowell, and more. Her writing appears in Scalawag, Literary Hub, Sojourners, Jai-Alai Magazine, and elsewhere. She is currently working on her first manuscript and documentary, which examine slavery as an ever-present haunting in the lives of Black mothers and their children.
Accessibility note: This event is up two flights of stairs and Lost City Books does not have an elevator. Please contact [email protected] with questions.
Dato de accesibilidad: Este evento toma lugar en el segundo piso y Lost City Books no tiene ascensor. Favor de contactar [email protected] con cualquiera duda.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Lost City Books, 2467 18th Street Northwest, Washington, United States
USD 0.00
