Description:

Performance and talk by Javier Perez. Reception to follow.

This talk is part of a spring residency of the Lingua Franca Spoken Word Movement, a South African company that fuses spoken word poetry and music with a commitment to making socially ostracized communities visible through workshops, performances, and platforms. Lingua Franca has disturbed the poetry community nationally by creating provocative and groundbreaking productions, while organizing the annual Naked Word Festival as an affirmation, declaration, and exploration of the future of a distinctly South African poetics.

During their two-week residency at Northwestern and in Chicago, Lingua Franca will give talks on indigeneity, poetry and social challenges, and performance in South Africa. In addition to this talk and performance, their events include lunchtime talks on Wednesday, April 11 and Thursday, April 12, and a reading and performance at the Poetry Foundation on Wednesday, April 18. Lingua Franca will also be performing at venues around Chicago on Friday and Saturday, April 20-21.

Co-sponsored by the Program of African Studies, the Buffett Institute for Global Studies, the Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, the Department of English, the Global Indigeneity Working Group, The Center for the Writing Arts, The Graduate School, and the Poetry Foundation.