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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif"><img width="374" height="486" style="width:3.8958in;height:5.0572in" id="image_0" src="cid:87a5e32f-8ec0-4ee2-9155-78198d5f593b" alt="Patience Agbabi poster.jpg"></span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">CONTACT for more information: Sarah Harford <a href="mailto:sarah.harford@yale.edu">
sarah.harford@yale.edu</a><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:12.0pt">Patience Agbabi</span></b><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> is a renowned British poet and performer of the spoken word. She has toured widely in for example the Czech Republic, Zimbabwe, Germany, Switzerland,
Namibia and the US. Her poetry includes many forms and genres, including<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><span style="color:#212121">traditional forms such as sestina, sonnet, and rhyme royal,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span>prose
poems and dramatic monologues, and also rap,<span style="color:#212121"> tattoos, and contemporary pop music</span>. Agbabi’s widely celebrated 2014 collection<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Telling Tales</i> riffs off the medieval poet Geoffry
Chaucer’s<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Caterbury Tales.</i><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color:#212529;background:#F8F3F1"> </span></span><span style="color:#242424">Writing as a black, female poet, born to Nigerian parents
and educated at Oxford, identifying as bi-cultural and bisexual feminist, her poetry is engaged with gender, sexual, racial, cultural, and linguistic identity issues. She is represented by Caribbean/African-let<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://www.renaissanceone.co.uk/artists">Renaissance
One.</a></span></span><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">Her work speaks to ways in which Yale English has questioned notions of canonic literature, broadened its focus to Anglophone literature across the world, and reset the study of medieval literature as a means
of re-examining the status of English in its European and Mediterranean context before it became a tool of colonial power. From her<span style="color:#3C3C3C;background:white">groundbreaking debut 1995 collection of poetry,</span><i><span style="color:#202122"> R.A.W.</span></i><span style="color:#202122;background:white">,
she has focused on racial and sexual politics</span><span style="color:black;background:white">; “I wrote<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><i>R.A.W</i><span style="color:black;background:white">. to right the wrongs of the world but was always
a poetical activist. Meaning and music, form and content were inextricably linked. In<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><i>Transformatrix</i><span style="color:black;background:white"> I was tapping into the deep subconscious, producing narrative
poems, dramatic monologues in forms like the sonnet, the sestina.” Of her 2008 work,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Bloodshot Monochrome</i>: “I’m obsessed with poetic form, the human form, the dynamics of performance. I write because my ink
must flow like blood. The written must be spoken. The chasm between page and stage must be healed.”<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span>Most recently she has also won acclaim for her Leap Cycle fiction series for children, from<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The
Infinite<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i>(2020) to<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The Past Master<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i>(2024), exploring time travel, neurodivergence, leaplings, climate change and young
black female identity.</span><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">She will be giving two lectures, one a poetry reading showcasing her work on Chaucer and other poetry, the other a conversation on race and migration, based on her contribution to a collaborative project sponsored
by the<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://www.gdwg.org.uk/" title="Original URL: https://www.gdwg.org.uk/. Click or tap if you trust this link.">Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group</a> with such writers as Ali Smith, Chris Cleave and Marina
Lewycka, giving voice to refugees in contemporary Britain. In a third event she will lead a creative writing workshop on poetry and performance. All welcome!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:10.0pt">***<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt">The Yale-Readings Listserv is sponsored by the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. To post announcements about poetry and fiction readings, send the full text
of the announcement, including contact information, to <a href="http://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/yale-readings">
<span style="color:#0563C1">nancy.kuhl at yale.edu.</span></a> Messages sent directly to the Yale-Readings list may not be posted.
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</span><span style="font-size:10.0pt">For more information about Poetry at the Beinecke Library, visit: Poetry at Beinecke Library:
<a href="https://beinecke.library.yale.edu/blogs/poetry-beinecke-library"><span style="color:#0563C1">https://beinecke.library.yale.edu/blogs/poetry-beinecke-library</span></a></span><span style="font-size:10.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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