Rabble Collective will present a creative reading followed by a panel discussion exploring the theme of presence. Presence can mean many things — the now, the way a person carries herself, a tense for writing. To our collective, presence means radical hope, honesty, resistance, and the practice of a love ethic. Presence also means responding to the urgent challenges of our times, whether the climate crisis, technological developments with Al, threats to democracy, or the epidemic of loneliness.
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C.D. Wright was certainly a poet of presence - being present in a moment, with language, with an idea - or, as she once phrased it, "Uncommitted people don't hold my interest period." As we consider presence, we ask, "What is important to commit our attention to as writers? How might we pay attention to it in our art?" Through this reading and panel we seek to examine and engage with our audience about the meaning of presence in poetry and prose, including the literal, metaphorical, abstract, and associative.