“Writing: A Life” series to host Asiya Wadud

By Justin Kopp, ’25 staff writer

Kicking off the spring semester’s set of guest author visits, LVC will welcome poet Asiya Wadud to campus this week.

Wadud authored many physical poetry collections and chapbooks. Her latest work is the collection “Mandible Wishbone Solvent,” published by the University of Chicago Press last week on Monday, Feb. 19.

“Throughout the collection lies an acknowledgment that any hold will drift, meander, and find new paths, with each separation making space for new entanglements,” the University of Chicago Press described on the collection’s webpage.

Several poems in the collection are ekphrastic. This means they narrate a scene, usually from a work of art, to augment and extend its meaning.

Wadud also wrote exhibition texts for collections of artwork. Most recently, she wrote the exhibition text for artist Emiliana Henriquez’s painting collection “Philospophia,” shown Sept. 6 to Oct. 7, 2023, at the Fortnight Institute art gallery in New York City.

Wadud lives in New York and teaches poetry at Saint Ann’s School, Columbia University and the Pacific Northwest College of Art.

Students of all majors are encouraged to bring their questions to Wadud’s reading and subsequent Q&A session. The event will take place in the Bishop Library Atrium on Tuesday, Feb. 27, at 7 p.m. Registration for virtual attendance via Zoom can be found at the event’s page on LVC’s website.