A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures
Butterflies Yesterday my name was dazzling diamond. Today my name is bright shiny star, soaring through the sky. Sometimes I am an empty house, a book with no pages. Strangers think my name is amusing charming rose. People don’t know I am silly princess, queen of art, dazzling mermaid, rough and tough. My real name […]
By Elijah Brooks, SAL Intern The virtual world has become an inescapable part of modern life, and because of this, the wisdom of Pablo Neruda is ripe with new applicability. In a 1971 interview with Radio-Canada (originally conducted in French), Neruda admires the physical world and voices his suspicion of writing that departs from it. When […]
By Gabrielle Bates “The route is often associative.” —Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric [Yes, and] When I was a little girl in Birmingham, Alabama, wracked with shame over some transgression I can no longer remember, I asked my father how, when faced with a choice, to know which decision is the right one. He […]
Henri Rousseau On the forest floor, the trees growing with bananas and peaches. A flower in the distance is as pink as a sunset flying away and the light blue and gray sky is like a fan trying to blow its way out of trouble. I’m telling you there is more to this jungle than […]
By Ann Teplick, WITS Writer-in-Residence Sleep in a field of salmon peonies. A rooftop with saxophone jazz. A sand dune with peacocks. All the warm night, sleep by the creek with its burble, the sheep with its fleece of charcoal, the sister who whispers “Let’s launch the canoe.” All the warm night. As a […]
As part of our Required Reading series, we share a list of three essential works for each of SAL’s featured writers. Up this time: groundbreaking poet, essayist, and playwright Claudia Rankine. Citizen: An American Lyric (2014) In 1970, Harvard professor Chester Pierce came up the term “micro-aggression” to describe the unconscious dismissals and insults non-black Americans inflict on black people. In […]
One of America’s most beloved radio shows, The Moth features stories by luminaries in the arts and sciences, newsmakers and news breakers, and every day heroes (and even a few reformed villains). If you’re unfamiliar, here’s how it works: each show begins with a theme, and storytellers explore that theme in unexpected ways, crossing between documentary […]
Bathing in India Before I was a citizen of this country, I was a citizen of the bucket. Staring at the water right under my nose. I don’t believe I can fit. Lifting me up, my mom tells me it is the only way, my feet dangling centimeters above the bubbly water. An orange bucket […]
On April 21st, writer, photographer, and art historian Teju Cole delivered a sweeping lecture on heritage, craft, and political responsibility at Town Hall Seattle for SAL’s 2015/16 Literary Arts Series. SAL Executive Director Ruth Dickey introduced his talk and moderated their conversation that evening. By Ruth Dickey, SAL Executive Director In a passage I love in Every […]
In My Own Underwater World Sometimes I feel like a fish in a tank in the jungle – out of place, silent while everyone is roaring, squawking respected in their hidden languages and I just sit there in my own underwater world I feel ignored, these animals drink my world while I breathe it as […]