Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, reading and book launch. With Allison Tobey, Emily Prado, and Genevieve Hudson. Hosted by Kevin Sampsell.

INCANTATION: LOVE POEMS FOR BATTLE SITES is one Chicana's witness of Trump's America and the ongoing chaos that pains us all. Inspired by bell hooks’ All About Love, Audrey Lorde’s “Uses of the Erotic,” and Adrienne Maree Brown’s Pleasure Activism, this new collection enlists love, pleasure, and the body to imagine a better world free of misogyny and white supremacy. Bermejo’s poetry explores US monuments, memorializes Black and brown bodies murdered by state sanctioned violence, and writes love poems to family, friends, and dalliances in rituals of resistance and resilience.

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and author of Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge (Sundress Publications). Her second collection, Incantation: Love Poems for Battle Sites is forthcoming from Mouthfeel Press in fall 2023. Her poem “Battlegrounds” was featured at Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, On Being’s Poetry Unbound, and Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World (W.W. Norton). She teaches with Antioch University, MFA and UCLA Extension and is the director of Women Who Submit. Her writing, teaching, and organizing are inspired by her family, her Chicana experience, and her passion for creating love and comfort in chaotic times.