Vanessa Place to perform on Friday, 7pm
B.H.Q.F.U – 34 Avenue A, Fl 3rd, New York, New York 10009

1. Vanessa Place will do a reading of several works.
2. Invited respondents will give their response.
3. Artist Devin Kenny, the moderator, will open the discussion up to the audience.

From event organizers, the National Coalition Against Censorship:

Place will perform:

– Pussy Galore, 2008
– What Does This Say About Me, 2011
– Statement of Facts (Neg.), 2010
– If I Wanted Your Opinion, I’d Remove the Duct Tape, 2014-2015
– In Advance of a Verdict of Guilt, 2012

Vanessa Place is an artist most often associated with the field of Conceptual Poetry. Her work functions as a ‘mouth piece’ recounting various controversial subject matter/ pre-existing text. It is worth noting that she is a criminal appellate attorney practicing in California (she has worked on the appeals of more than a thousand indigent felons, specializing in sex offenders and sexually violent predators). In 2015 she was shortlisted for the 2015 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation for her work on Guantanamo by Frank Smith (Les Figues Press, which she is the director of). Whether it be translation or advocating for the indigent, what is clear is that these roles inform her work– she works as an agent that is professionally without agency.

Since 2009 she has been tweeting the entire novel “Gone with the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell–word for word. The novel, published in 1936, is set in Georgia during the Civil War. Written by a white author the novel has come under scrutiny over the last several decades for its offensive use of black characters. Place tweeting a book that is widely in print has become a spark in a debate of institutional racism and this past summer she has had a slew of cancellations from various institutional events and positions:
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On May 18, the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) acceded to the demands of an online petition and decided to remove Place from a subcommittee that reviews applications for their annual conference.

On May 29, the Berkeley Poetry Conference, which had refused demands to banish Place from the program, scrapped their entire event, citing the withdrawal of a number of other participants.