Please join a.p. and Callie’s on March 24th at 7:00pm to celebrate the release of Jesse Darling’s Virgins and Edmund Hardy’s Every Cruel Thing, published by Monitor Books. These releases mark each author’s debut collection of poetry. Each will read from their publication, then sign copies of the books, which will be available for purchase.

Jesse Darling’s practice spans sculpture, drawing, text, and moving-image. Saints, contorted steel forms, and pop culture figures all find homes within Darling’s work, which grounds itself in the political will produced by states of vulnerability and pain. Darling also champions communication through their various forms of dialogue, including mail art projects, which seek to create alternative means of disseminating and exchanging information and affect. The poems included in Virgins chart dark corners, long hours, seedy nights, villains and the forces that engender them. The artist’s voice is charged and direct; its method of address grabs readers and shakes them into motion.

Edmund Hardy is a filmmaker, artist, and writer based in the UK. His work centers on moments of queer communal life and the search for other worlds. He has published writings in Jacobin, Tribune, Granta, as well as a book of experimental philology, Complex Crosses, with Contraband Books. Every Cruel Thing foregrounds language’s potential to reveal forms of love that bind communities and exist in opposition to structural violence. Across the work, Hardy references numerous artists and writers—including SOPHIE, Pasolini, Bladee, Jean Cocteau, Nisha Ramayya—displaying his commitment to embodying a polyphony of voices through poetry.

The event will be held in accordance with 2G+ rules: either proof of vaccinated and boosted status, or vaccinated status, and a negative antigen test (not older than 24 hours) will be required for entry. Attendance is free but space is limited. Please use the form below to register.