On Tuesday, the Department of Literary Arts hosted a virtual presentation and conversation with writer, performer and artist Rosamond S. King. The event was the second in a series of five virtual readings and presentations from distinguished artists and writers organized by the department for the spring semester.
King is a professor of English and the director of the Institute for the Humanities at Brooklyn College, as well as the author of several books and poetry collections including “All the Rage” and “Rock | Salt | Stone,” the latter of which won the Lambda Literary Award. In her work, which she has presented at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and several literary festivals, she “draws from reality to create non-literal, culturally and politically engaged interpretations of African diaspora experiences,” according to an email description of the event sent to Brown community members by Peter Nelson, academic program director and senior lecturer in literary arts.
Her presentation explored the future of interdisciplinary art through her own work and the work of a diverse range of artists. She said she sees multidisciplinary art forms as “collaborative, often bilingual or multilingual and ultimately embracing both the digital and the analog.”
The spirit of collaboration and inclusivity are central to King’s vision of the arts. “I believe everyone who can write or speak has the capacity to produce literature, and everyone who can read or hear has the capacity to appreciate it,” she said.
King also described her own genre-crossing works and introduced her upcoming book, “This Intentionally Left Blank,” a collection of “erasure poems” derived from two prominent government reports that she explores as acts of erasure themselves: the 2019 Mueller report and the 1965 Moynihan report.
“The goal of all of my work is to make people think, feel and wonder — not necessarily in that order,” King said.
The next event in the series, scheduled for next Tuesday, Feb. 8, will feature poet Monica Youn.
