PS Ph.D. Candidate Sol Cabrini’s “Tgirl.jpg” has been published, and we’re ready to celebrate! Poet and writer Kamelya Omayma Youssef and Roof Books/Segue Foundation’s Lonely Christopher will kick off the program. After reading aloud from the book, Cabrini will take us on a musical journey through the issues it explores. Attendees will then have the opportunity for a Q&A session and a reception to follow.

Tgirl.jpg is a complex verse collection following a Black transgender woman’s life over a decade, from teenage years to adulthood, from Chicago to New York, with hefty philosophical and existential quandaries expressed in the same dynamic, catchy, heartfelt, and challenging voice found in her music. Cabrini’s hip-hop background is fundamentally intertwined through her poetics, with poems transforming into songs and back again, aided by a series of QR codes that make the reader a listener and invite them into a tapestry of interactive word and sound.

This dynamic assortment of poetry, diaries, letters, and songs will take you on a strange journey from innocence to experience, exploring the intricate relationship between self-discovery, social involvement with the world, and personal development —from the perspective of a trans Woman of Color. Cabrini tells a contemporary story of resilience and struggle, reckoning with lineages while forging ahead into an avant-garde realm of Afro-Surrealism and racial intersectionality. “Tgirl.jpg” is as powerful as it is fun. Discover a new favorite experimentalist in the fascinating Sol Cabrini.

Bios:

Sol Cabrini composes music under the alias Sol Patches. She was part of Free Street Theatre’s ensemble, the artist/activist #LetUsBreathe Collective, and has made several experimental films. A PhD candidate in Performance Studies at NYU’s Tisch School, she is an alumnus of the EMERGENCY program at Brooklyn Arts Exchange and the Studio Museum in Harlem’s Museum Education Practicum.

Kamelya Omayma Youssef is the author of A Book With a Hole in It (Wendy’s Subway, 2022). Her work has been published with 1080 Press, Mizna, Sukoon, The Margins, Poem-a-Day, and elsewhere as well as on the theater stage. Her homes are Dearborn, Baalbek, South Lebanon, and Brooklyn, and she currently adjuncts at The New School. She and you will see a free Palestine in this lifetime.

Roof Books, an imprint of the non-profit Segue Foundation, has published experimental, innovative, and avant-garde poetry and criticism since 1976. Roof Books was founded by James Sherry. Roof Books currently publishes six titles annually. The groups that Roof Books has focused on include the New York School, Language poetry, Flarf, Conceptual writing, New Narrative, and environmental and ecopoetry, as well as related tendencies. Roof Books is edited by James Sherry, with occasional guests and Lonely Christopher joining the editorial staff in 2022.

The Segue Foundation is a non-profit 501©(3) arts organization, created and operated by poet James Sherry, supporting the contemporary avant-garde since 1976. Segue was an instrumental platform for the Language poetry movement, in the late 1970s and early 80s, publishing the influential poetry periodical Roof and distributing the critical newsletter L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E.

Location: 721 Broadway, Richard Schechner Studio, Room 612

Time: 6:00-7:30 pm EST

Free!

Registration