Josh Fomon and Jake Syersak — 'Our Human Shores' & 'Sun Scars'

Third Place Books welcomes poet Josh Fomon and translator Jake Syersak to our Ravenna store for a conversation about , Josh's ecopoetic reckoning with human-caused climate change, and Sun Scars, a work by Moroccan Francophone poet Tahar Ben Jalloun recently translated into English by Jake.

This event is free and open to the public. For important updates, RSVP is highly recommended in advance. This event will include a public signing and time for audience Q&A. Sustain our author series by purchasing a copy of the featured books!

This event is free to attend. Registration is recommended in advance.

Our Human Shores explores living in the Anthropocene, the ecological disasters life faces, and the barriers and inequality society faces in trying to create a better and livable world.

Our Human Shores is an exploration into how language is rooted within the Anthropocene -- and how poetry shapes meaning-making, faith in people and institutions, and death through lyricism, experiment, and ecopoetics. Using a phrase from John Keats' "Bright Star" sonnet, Our Human Shores explores a tautology of thresholds and shores to remake our world, our experience of nature, and our relationship with climate, creation, and humankind's existential place in a world staring down the apocalypse.Our Human Shores is a speculative work that will guide humanity through extinction.

Sun Scars is the first English-language translation of Moroccan-born francophone author Tahar Ben Jelloun’s earliest poetry. Originally published in 1972, this work remains a timeless scorched-earth indictment against those who would cower in “the fault-lines of… silence” while profiteers of political, economic, and religious orders trample a nation. Armed to the teeth with a vitriolic, surreal linguistic, Ben Jelloun chews away the fantastical vision of Morocco as a sun-drenched tourist’s daydream of pay-as-you-play exotica, revealing a people and a landscape writhing in agony just beneath the surface. With seismic finesse and lyrical vision, Sun Scars declares it bad faith to see anything but: “you’ve just got to drag yourself by the tip of your tongue-tied-ness by the pupil of your eyes / what’s unthinkable.”

Josh Fomon is the author of Our Human Shores and Though We Bled Meticulously, both published by Black Ocean. His poems have appeared in a variety of journals, including Afternoon Visitor, DIAGRAM, The Georgia Review, jubilat, mercury firs, Poetry Northwest, and TYPO. He lives in Seattle.

Jake Syersak is the author of the poetry books Mantic Compost and Yield Architecture. He is also the translator of several works by Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine and Tahar Ben Jelloun. His work has received grants from The National Endowment of the Arts and PEN/Heim. He currently lives in Olympia, WA.

Founded in 1998 in Lake Forest Park, Washington, Third Place Books is dedicated to the creation of a community around books and the ideas inside them. With locations in Lake Forest Park and Seattle's Ravenna and Seward Park neighborhoods, Third Place Books is proud to serve the entire Seattle metro area. Learn more about their event series at thirdplacebooks.com/events.

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