Rivering Towards: Desert-Water Poetics and Politics
Facilitated by Mallika Singh
Santa Fe River. Photograph by Mallika Singh.
About the reading group
This is an online reading group and will take place on Zoom.
Sundays, January 24-February 21, 2021
Time: 2-4 pm EST (2 hours)
Capacity: 25 participants
Registration: $15 [If this expense presents a hardship for you, please reach out to sanjana@wendyssubway.com]
Register here.
Water is located, tied to place, and water is also everywhere, is everything. In this reading group, we will think about water and waterways particularly within desert geographies and the Southwest. What is the history and future of land and water in dry places? What are the life forms at the border, which is also the river? This reading and writing group will attempt to understand rivers/rivering as an action and verb, and water as movement. Amidst ongoing apocalypse(s) and climate catastrophes, as well as demands for material decolonization and abolition, we will hold the strengths of multiplicity, spaciousness, and spilling/excess as a feature of water bodies. What can water teach us about gender, intimacy, collaboration, and collective power?
We will read and web together poets and writers including Natalie Diaz, Asiya Wadud, Nick Estes, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, mónica teresa ortiz, and Brandon Shimoda. We will also engage with videos, music, manifestos, and short writing experiments.
About the facilitator
Mallika Singh is a poet, cook, and facilitator who writes about environment, surveillance, and intimacies. They are from many places and are currently frolicking in the high desert of New Mexico. Mallika is the author of the chapbook, Retrieval (Wendy's Subway), and is pursuing a certificate in Community Herbalism from the People’s Medicine School.