Poetry Reading Group

Calling all poetry lovers in Edinburgh – come and join us every second Monday of the month for our new poetry reading group, VOICES. From Queer and BAME voices, to Native American voices and voices in translation, our reading group will be an opportunity to explore an eclectic range of poetry.

No need to have read every poem from a collection or every collection from a poet! Come along for a casual conversation, to share interpretations and find meaning together.

VOICES: Mojave American Poetry

This month, our poetry reading group will focus on Postcolonial Love Poem by Mojave poet Natalie Diaz. Published in 2020, Diaz’s poetry collection received great acclaim, winning the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in poetry, as well as making its way to the shortlist of both the Forward Prize for Best Collection and the T.S Eliot Prize. With the release of Diaz’s debut collection When My Brother Was An Aztec in the UK this August, our reading group turns back to Postcolonial Love Poem and its celebration of indigenous culture.

Postcolonial Love Poem is a thunderous river of a book, an anthem of desire against erasure. It demands that every body carried in its pages - bodies of language, land, suffering brothers, enemies and lovers - be touched and held. Here, the bodies of indigenous, Latinx, black and brown women are simultaneously the body politic and the body ecstatic. Natalie Diaz defies the conditions from which she writes, a nation whose creation predicated the diminishment and ultimate erasure of bodies like hers and the people she loves. Her poetry questions what kind of future we might create, built from the choices we make now - how we might learn our own cures and ‘go where there is love’.

Join us Monday the 12th of September at 7:30pm in the bookshop to discuss Natalie Diaz’s striking collection. A place at the reading group is £5 – this voucher is valid up to and including the night of the event against the cost of any book. Join us for wine, nibbles and great conversation!