SYRIA | Because We Come From Everything: The Poetics of Migration

The Poetry Society of America and City Lights Bookstore present a poetry reading and discussion as part of the Poetry Coalition's 2017 programming. Poets Jack Hirschman and Jack Marshall will read poems of theirs and others. Journalist Jeanne Carstensen will join them in conversation.

Jack Hirschman is the former Poet Laureate of the City of San Francisco as well as a translator and editor. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, plus some 45 translations from half a dozen languages, as well as the editor of anthologies and journals. Among his many volumes of poetry are Endless Threshold, The Xibalba Arcane, and Lyripol (City Lights, 1976).

Born in Brooklyn to Jewish parents who emigrated from Iraq and Syria, Jack Marshall now lives in California. He is the author of the memoir From Baghdad to Brooklyn and several poetry collections that have received the PEN Center USA Award, two Northern California Book Awards, and a nomination from the National Book Critics Circle.

Jeanne Carstensen is a San Francisco based writer and radio reporter who is covering the refugee crisis in Greece for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.  An editor at Salon, SFGate.com and the Whole Earth Review,  and a National Arts Journalism Program fellow at Columbia University, her work has appeared in the New York Times, PRI's The World, Foreign Policy, Nautilus and Salon, among other publications.

Admission is free.