With special guests Douglas Kearney, Miré Regulus, and Sayge Carroll
Wednesday, June 8, 7:00pm
Open Book, Target Performance Hall
1011 Washington Avenue South, Minneapolis
FREE in-person event! Proof of Covid-19 vaccination (or negative PCR test taken within the prior 72 hours) required for entry; mask wearing is strongly encouraged while in the performance hall.
Reception to follow, courtesy of Coffee House Press!
Join us as we celebrate the release of the deja vu: black dreams and black time (Coffee House Press) with an evening of performance and poetry by the amazing California-based writer Gabrielle Civil and a handful of her creative comrades from the Twin Cities! Emerging from the intersection of pandemic and uprising, the déjà vu activates forms both new and ancestral, drawing movement, speech, and lyric essay into a performance memoir that considers Haitian tourist paintings, dance rituals, race at the movies, Black feminist legacies, and more. With intimacy, humor, and verve, Gabrielle Civil blurs boundaries between memory, grief, and love; then, now, and the future. Don’t miss this!
"With this work, Gabrielle Civil continues to model generosity, bravery, and vulnerability as core principles of black feminist performance, creativity, and living. Read it for the beauty, the black feminist references. Read it for a particular herstory of this time. Look for what you might be unknowing right now and what you need urgently to remember.” —Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Purchase the book!
Can’t make it to the event? We can ship you a SIGNED copy! Shipping is for US Media Mail only — if you wish to have this book shipped internationally, please contact orders [at] raintaxi [dot] com for pricing.
the déjà vu
black dreams and black time
$24 (includes shipping in U.S.)
About the authors
Gabrielle Civil is a Black feminist performance artist, poet, and writer, originally from Detroit, MI. She has premiered over fifty performance art works around the world, most recently Jupiter for the Salt Lake City Performance Art Festival (2021) and Vigil for Northern Spark (2021). Her performance memoirs include Swallow the Fish (2017), Experiments in Joy (2019), (ghost gestures) (2021), and the déjà vu (2022). A 2019 Rema Hort Mann LA Emerging Artist, she teaches at the California Institute of the Arts. The aim of her work is to open up space.
Douglas Kearney has published seven books ranging from poetry to essays to libretti. His most recent collection, Sho (Wave Books), is a Minnesota Book Award winner and a National Book Award, Griffin Poetry Prize, and Pen America finalist. He is the 2021 recipient of OPERA America’s Campbell Opera Librettist Prize, created and generously funded by librettist/lyricist Mark Campbell. A Whiting Writer’s and Foundation for Contemporary Arts Cy Twombly awardee with residencies/fellowships from Cave Canem, The Rauschenberg Foundation, and others, he teaches Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities.
Miré Regulus is a writer, performance artist, public artist, community builder and parent. She works the ‘transformative intersection’ through where her work is sited; through poetry and non-linear, rich, poetical prose; through community participation; and by exploring how body+movement+gesture hold what we know. She works at how we form engaged community and the unique ways we figure out how to take care of each other. One of the Artistic Directors of Poetry for People, she lives and works at the intersection of the BIPOC, queer, political, food-focused and artistic communities seeking to build a more equitable and embodied world.
Sayge Carroll has been tending the soil of community through art and advocacy for more than 20 years. Carroll is a recent graduate of University of Minnesota MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts and Social Practice and holds a BA from the University of Minnesota and is currently enrolled in the Master Gardener program at the University of Minnesota.Through visual art, sound design, and civic engagement, Carroll has devoted their career and life work to connecting ancestral wisdom, lineage and knowledge of natural resources to the present. In their public art and events, Carroll works outside traditional art spaces to reach people in the context of their lives and communities.