WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
When:
March 22, 2023 @ 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
2023-03-22T18:00:00-04:00
2023-03-22T19:30:00-04:00
Where:
Morgenstern's Books, 849 Auto Mall Rd, Bloomington
One of Bloomington’s finest and most outspoken poets, Hiromi Yoshida is the author of four chapbooks, the most recent being Icarus Superstar. Her poems have been included in the INverse Poetry Archive, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, the Wilder Poetry Book Prize, the New Women’s Voices Poetry Prize, and the Gerald Cable Book Award. She teaches poetry for the Indiana Writers Center, and coordinates the Last Sunday Poetry Reading & Open Mic program for the Writers Guild at Bloomington. She also serves on the board of directors of the Arts Alliance of Greater Bloomington as a literary arts representative, and on the Artistic Advisory Committee of Constellation Stage & Screen. While Bloomington has been her delightfully adopted home throughout 27 years of continuous residence, she can be nostalgic for the New York City of the 1970s and 1990s featured throughout Icarus Superstar.
Icarus, throughout this chapbook, is the poststructuralist signifier of fluctuating meaning, arbitrary value, and circulating desire. As such, Icarus is the superseded supergiant star; the mercurial, hermaphroditic meretrix of alchemy that green pennies materialize; a randomly floating particle like the blinking eye’s waxy speck, or vitreous floater—or a coronavirus subvariant (symptom of our collective disease). In all instances, Icarus is the object of Hiromi Yoshida’s personal coinage, and the haunting subtext of the New York City flashback snapshots that she captures.
Hiromi Yoshida will read from this poetry collection, and will engage in a Q&A with the audience.
