Literary Partners Program: Kweli International Literary Festival

Puerto Rican poet Vincent Toro’s new collection takes the Latin American idea of an artistic social gathering (the “tertulia”) and revises it for the Latinx context in the United States. In verses dense with juxtaposition, the collection examines immigration, economics, colonialism and race via the sublime imagery of music, visual art, and history. Toro draws from his own social justice work in various U.S. cities to create a kaleidoscopic vision of the connections between the personal and the political, the local and the global, in a book that both celebrates and questions the complexities of the human condition.

In this reading and conversation, Penguin poets Willie Perdomo and Vincent Toro dive into the legacy and poetics of the Nuyorican Movement, its influence on their work, and its impact on American poetry over the last 50 years.

This event is made possible through the Poets House Literary Partners program.