P&P Live! Radical Imaginations: Poetry as a Tool for Change

Poets Susan Briante, Tongo Eisen-Martin and Mark Nowak present their new work for Politics and Prose to show how poetry can be used as a tool for real change.

Susan Briante is the author of four books including, THE MARKET WONDERS (Ahsahta Press, 2016), UTOPIA MINUS (Ahsahta Press, 2011), and PIONEERS IN THE STUDY OF MOTION (Ahssahta Press, 2007). She is a professor of creative writing at the University of Arizona. Her most recent book, DEFACING THE MONUMENT (Noemi Press, 2020) is the narration of an Operation Streamline hearing, a proceeding during which as many as 70 undocumented migrants are criminally prosecuted and sentenced en masse to serve jail time prior to deportation.

Tongo Eisen-Martin is the author of Heaven Is All Goodbyes (City Lights Books, 2017) and someone's dead already (Boostrap Press, 2015) and his poetry has been featured in Harper's and New York Times Magazine. Heaven Is All Goobyes was shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize and awarded the California Book Award for Poetry, an American Book Award, and a PEN Oakland Book Award. He is also a movement worker and educator whose work in Rikers Island was featured in the New York Times. He has been a faculty member at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University, and his curriculum on extrajudicial killing of Black people, "We Charge Genocide Again!" has been used as an educational and organizing tool throughout the country. He's from San Francisco.

Mark Nowak is the author of Coal Mountain Elementary, Shut Up Shut Down, and Revenants. He is the recipient of the Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism and fellowships from the Lannan and Guggenheim foundations. Nowak has led poetry workshops for workers and trade unions in the US, South Africa, the UK, Panama, the Netherlands, and elsewhere. He is currently a professor of English at Manhattanville College and the founding director of the Worker Writers School.

Purchase “Defacing the Monument” by Susan Briante here:

Purchase “Heaven Is All Goodbyes” by Tongo Eisen-Martin here:

Purchase “Social Poetics” by Mark Nowak here: