Paolo Javier: True Account of Talking to the 7 in Sunnyside
Celebrating the launch of poet Paolo Javier's True Account of Talking to the 7 in Sunnyside (Roof Books, 2022).
Paolo’s poesis arrives from variegated and unexpected sources, such as diaries, dreams, lists, conversation, photographs, articles, blogs, DMs, music lyrics, instructions, comics, maps, film dialogue, interviews, slang, paranormal accounts, film theory, birthday cards, letters, “and other people’s poetry–to name a few.” True Account of Talking to the 7 in Sunnyside is an incendiary new collection where outlaw archiving meets postmodern bricolage, disjointedly mapping disorientating experience, and yielding flashes of unexpected clarity through a strong sense of place.
“This book is the most on a name with the past for the future. We find ourselves in the loss of translation, as a posthuman ancestor pattern woven into an at least thirty thousand year aspect from the ground— face— interface—inner face—inter face — inner phase— inter phase—inter faze— inner faze—Paolo Javier is knocking on everyone's door.” —Roberto Harrison
Paolo will present on both books, along with live readings by fellow poets Yuko Otomo and Stephanie Gray, a screening by artist Chris Baliwas, and a performance by Listening Center (David Mason).
“Though ostensibly rooted in Javier’s transcultural negotiations of family, romance and artmaking, O.B.B.’s themes are neither stated nor assumed, but structurally emergent in its chameleonic oscillation of text fragments, cartoons and mixed-media artwork.”—John Nyman, Carousel Mag
About Paolo Javier
The former Queens Borough Poet Laureate (2010-2014), Paolo Javier was born in the Philippines and grew up in Las Piñas, Metro Manila. The recipient of a 2021 Rauschenberg Foundation Artist Grant, he was a featured artist in Greater NY 2015 and Queens International 2018: Volumes. He has produced three albums of sound poetry with Listening Center (David Mason) and collaborated again recently with filmmaker/poet Lynne Sachs on SWERVE, a short film that premiered at BAM Cinemafest. He is the author of four previous full-length books and lives with his family in Jackson Heights, NYC.
Book Launch
Friday, December 9, 2022
6:30 pm
This event at CARA will also serve as the in-person Mannahatta launch for O.B.B. (Nightboat Books, 2021), Paolo's groundbreaking and critically-acclaimed exploration of comics (&) poetry. O.B.B. a.k.a. The Original Brown Boy has many identities: it is a comics poem and a manifesto on comics poetry; an experimental comic book sequel to a poem twenty years in the making; and an homage to the Mimeo Revolution, weird fiction, Kamishibai, the political cartoon, Pilipinx komiks history, and the poet bp/Nichol.
True Account of Talking to the 7 in Sunnyside and O.B.B. will be available for purchase in the CARA Bookstore.