ANN ARBOR – Petra Kuppers will be appearing at Common Language Bookstore for a book launch party on July 20 at 6 p.m. The aut BAR will provide wine, beverages and light hors d'ouevres. Kuppers will read from and discuss her new book of poems, "Pearl Stitch." The collection knits together feminism with queer and disability activism using cultural points of reference from mythology to Madonna.
Kuppers is a disability culture activist, a community performance artist, and a Professor at the University of Michigan. She directs the Olimpias, an international disability culture performance collective. She lives in Ann Arbor with her partner and collaborator Stephanie Heit.
Here is an excerpt from her work:
You have lain too long outside the gates of the kingdom
soldier queen bedding an endless row of kings.
Milk, and blood and the fats dissolving in the chemical heat new births, my dears, new births
under the smile of the moon under the sickle of our attack.
Your teeth stand
Row upon row a sharks maw
No longer hens, ewes, np longer lionesses. Initiate, I greet you.
Claim back the beloved's bodies, for ourselves.
