Global Poetry Festival

In this connection, our francophone curators Jay and Eloi lead a translation workshop. Students will receive a broad overview on Kigali and Rwandan culture, then will break out into small groups to collaborate on an English-French language poem translation. The group will come back together and review their work. Jean Paul Nsanzi (Jay) joined our team in late 2019, fresh in his return to his mother country after living in different parts of East Africa and Europe for many years. He is an experienced communicator with a range of experiences working with non-profit organizations, as well as in the fashion and music industries. He has worked as an event organizer, a dancer, a barista and used to be a Taekwondo player. He is creative, funny, outgoing, loves music, adventures, history, travelling and meeting new people. Eloi Mugabe is our musical connoisseur, born and raised in Rwanda in a small happy family. He has a passion for art and music and that explains his involvement in the music scene of Rwanda. When he is not curating he is working/touring with upcoming hip hop artists to help develop and support their talents. Eloi holds a degree in Business and IT from the University of Rwanda, and he has recently helped set up Africa’s newest Portal in Bamako, Mali.

Marie Howe is the author of four volumes of poetry, Magdalene: Poems; The Kingdom of Ordinary Time; The Good Thief; and What the Living Do, and she is the co-editor of a book of essays, In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, Agni, Ploughshares, Harvard Review, and The Partisan Review, among others. She has been a fellow at the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College and a recipient of NEA and Guggenheim fellowships, and Stanley Kunitz selected Howe for a Lavan Younger Poets Prize from the American Academy of Poets. In 2015, she received the Academy of American Poets Poetry Fellowship which recognizes distinguished poetic achievement. From 2012-2014, she served as the Poet Laureate of New York State.

Mark Doty is the author of nine books of poetry, including Deep Lane (April 2015), Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems, which won the 2008 National Book Award, and My Alexandria, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the T.S. Eliot Prize in the UK. He is also the author of three memoirs: the New York Times-bestselling Dog Years, Firebird, and Heaven’s Coast, as well as a book about craft and criticism, The Art of Description: World Into Word. Doty has received two NEA fellowships, Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships, a Lila Wallace/Readers Digest Award, and the Witter Byner Prize.

In this connection, our expert team of interpreter curators Ezra and Sam lead a translation workshop. Students will receive a broad overview on Mexico City creative culture, then will break out into small groups to collaborate on an English-Spanish language poem translation. The group will come back together and review and discuss their work. 

Ezra Ruiz is majoring in Language Interpretation at the Instituto Superior de Intérpretes y Traductores in Mexico City where he studies linguistic mediation in English, French and Italian. His primary focus is on language education of which he has worked as a teacher. His interests include poetry and history as well as engaging in wonderful conversations with people around the world. 

Samuel Ordoñez is a conference interpreter and art enthusiast with broad experience in energy, SAP, and engineering assignments. 

Writer, organizer, vocalist, spoken word poet, and educator Mahogany L. Browne is the author of poetry and fiction. Her YA poetry book Black Girl Magic celebrates a black girlhood that is “free, unforgettable, and luminous” (School Library Journal), while her children’s book Woke Baby is for all the littlest progressives who grow up to change the world; both were published in 2018 by Roaring Brook/Macmillan. Her poetry collections include Kissing Caskets (YesYes Books, 2017) and the NAACP-nominated chapbook Redbone (Willow Books, 2016). She has co-edited the anthology The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 3: Black Girl Magic, declared by Dazed as “one of the most important volumes of poetry in recent years” and is at work on a YA novel Chlorine Sky (Crown Books, 2021). Her most recent book is the YA anthology WOKE: A Young Poets Guide To Justice (Roaring Brook Press, 2020), co-edited with Elizabeth Acevedo and Olivia Gatwood. Of Redbone, Ross Gay wrote: “What I may love most about Redbone is the way it strains formally, with syntax and diction, with voice and perspective, searching for the right space on the page to make of this complex family story which, like most family stories, is made of sweetness and plain old hurt a kind of bearable song. It’s such a moving act. Such a caring and true telling. Such a singing.”

Born in Oakland, California, Browne dropped out of high school after being told not to write poetry during a English honors class. Using her personal experiences with addiction, racism, sexism and oppression to inspire her own brand of shameless authentic work, Browne’s spoken word performances create a platform for women and girls to feel empowered and heard.

She has a MFA in Writing and Activism from Pratt Institute, where she founded the Women Writers of Color Reading Room and became the director of the Black Lives Matter program. Browne is one of the founders of the socially active literary collective #BlackPoetsSpeakOut (with Amanda Johnston, Jonterri Gadson, Jericho Brown, and Sherina Rodriguez Sharpe), created out of urgency and as a response to the non-indictment of the Mike Brown’s murderer.

Browne is the publisher of Penmanship Books, curator of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Friday Night Slam, founder of the Women Writers of Color Reading Room, and the director of Black Lives Matter at Pratt Institute, and artistic director at Urban Word NYC (a non-profit youth literary organization).

Her work has appeared in Poetry, Bustle, BET, Academy of American Poets, and other venues. She has also released five LPs, including a live album, Sheroshima. She is the recipient of literary fellowships from Agnes Gund, Air Serenbe, Cave Canem, Poets House, and Rauschenberg. Browne has been featured in PBS NewsHour reading her poem “Black Girl Magic” and in HBO’s Brave New Voices. She has toured internationally as a member of Global Poetics, an international arts exchange.

Mahogany L. Browne is the current Poetry Coordinator at St. Francis College’s MFA Program. She resides in Brooklyn, NY.

Our curators in Berlin are both not from Berlin - giving them a unique perspective on what it’s like to start a life in that city. Hear from our curators about their accumulation and perspective on German culture in Berlin.

Yağmur Cıngıllıoğlu was born and raised in Turkey. She received a B.A. in Sociology from Galatasaray University with her ethnographic research on the underground queer nightlife of İstanbul. In September 2018, she moved to Berlin to pursue her studies for an M.A. degree in Visual and Media Anthropology at Freie Universität. Since music is her true passion, her primary focus in academia remained the same, to have a deeper understanding of how music constructs the societal space. With the ambition of adopting a more collaborative approach to her inquiry, she started to moderate labs & open discussions that intersect performative arts and social sciences. Queer studies, media studies, film and photography, expressive arts, ancient teachings, spirituality, ecological sustainability are some of the fields that inspire her. Additionally, she has over five years of experience in Marketing, Sales, and Project Management.

Sergio Guerra Abril is a dance artist and a graduate of the American University in Washington D.C. where he studied Dance and Mathematics. Originally from Madrid, he is currently based in Berlin where he continues to perform and make new work. His interests include the actualization of mathematical ideas on stage, the creation of dynamical systems with multiple bodies, and the relationship between body and mind performance. 

In this connection, our pro team of curators invites a local musician to share about their work and perform for the Middle School Music class. They will facilitate the conversation and introductions, and a Q&A after a special intimate performance! 

Tomás Ramirez is an interpreter and translator who studied at the Instituto Superior de Intérpretes y Traductores in Mexico City. Tomás serves as the Portal Director for Mexico City in addition to being a freelance booking agent who has worked with several entertainment agencies including: Ache Entretenimiento, Filter Mexico, TAPE, Sicario, among others. He currently works with Noiselab and has curated over 38 concerts and festivals in 2019 including digital and VR installations around CDMX.

Ciela Herce is from CDMX and has a degree in language interpretation from the Instituto Superior de Intérpretes y Traductores. Ciela’s favorite word in Wanderlust and this word also describes her well. She loves to travel and learn about cultures around the world which is the principal reason she became a translator and serves her and her guests well in the Mexico City_Portal.