Monday, February 24, 2020

Happy 95th Birthday to Etel Adnan!

We start this week out with birthday greetings for Lebanese-American poet and painter Etel Adnan, who turns 95 today! PennSound's Etel Adnan author page is home to a modest collection of recordings that nevertheless give a sense of her diverse talents.

We begin with Adnan's 2006 appearance on episode #118 of Leonard Schwartz's program, Cross-Cultural Poetics, titled "Forms of Violence." Via phone from Paris, she "reads from her book In the Heart of A Heart Of Another Country (City Lights), and meditates on her mother city of Beirut and American violence, inner and outer."

From 2010, we have a Serpentine Gallery reading showcasing The Arab Apocalypse and a 2012 reading commemorating the release of Homage to Etel Adnan (Post-Apollo), which was held at The Green Arcade Books Ideas Goods and co-sponsored by The Poetry Center and Small Press Traffic. Adnan returned to the Serpentine Sackler Gallery in London for a conversation with poet Robert Grenier a few weeks later. This chat between two hybrid artists was the inaugural event for the exhibition, "Etel Adnan: the Weight of the World."

Our most recent addition is a marvelous longform discussion with Jennifer Scappettone, recorded September 23–24, 2017, which has been segmented into individual tracks by theme, including "Home Life and School in Beirut," "Education in Philosophy and Beginnings in Painting," "English-Language Poetry and US Politics from the Vietnam War through Today," and "Cultural Identity, Multilingualism, and Translation". We're grateful to be able to share her work with our audience, and  likewise send our thanks to those who've shared resources with us. You can listen to any of the aforementioned recordings by clicking here.