Join us for a reading and book launch of Like a Hammer: Poets on Mass Incarceration, just out from Haymarket Books and edited by Diana Marie Delgado. Like A Hammer is an anthology of poems that unearths the shared traumas produced by America’s incarceration system. Sin à Tes Souhaits, Roque Raquel Salas Rivera and Vanessa Angélica Villarreal will read from the anthology.
About the anthology
Like A Hammer is an anthology of poems that unearths the shared traumas produced by America’s incarceration system.
These powerful poems of witness seek to address the oppressive systems that make up the US prison-industrial complex, revealing cracks in a criminal punishment system that too often appears unchangeable. The impacts of that system reverberate through lives and across generations. The poets gathered here aim to foreground the real experiences of people touched by the system, to upend dominant narratives, shine light on injustice, and act as a fulcrum around which to organize communities in support of change.
Like A Hammer explores how art and imagination can serve as vehicles for endurance, offering us the hope to envision a better future.
Edited by Diana Marie Delgado, a poet and advocate for social justice, the Poetry Center couldn't be more thrilled to celebrate this timely and powerful anthology.
About the readers
Sin à Tes Souhaits is a poet, editor, and consultant from East Las Vegas. His poems have been published in The Sun, Rumpus, and The Academy of American Poets, among others. Sin teaches at Nevada State University.
Roque Raquel Salas Rivera es el autor de seis poemarios, entre ellos lo terciario/ the tertiary, que fue semifinalista para el Premio Nacional del Libro y ganó el Premio Literario Lambda a una obra transgénero. // Roque Raquel Salas Rivera is the author of six poetry collections, including lo terciario/ the tertiary, which was longlisted for the National Book Award and won a Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry.
Vanessa Angélica Villarreal is the author of Magical/Realism, longlisted for the National Book Award, and Beast Meridian, recipient of a Whiting Award. She is a 2021 NEA Fellow and holds a doctorate from the University of Southern California.
In addition to the in-person reading, most Reading & Lecture Series events are streamed live on our website.