Harryette Mullen in conversation with Tonya M. Foster

City Lights, Undisciplining the Fields, and The Poetry Center at San Francisco State University present

Harryette Mullen in conversation with Tonya M. Foster

City Lights celebrates the publication of

Regaining Unconsciousness: Poems

By Harryette Mullen

Published by Graywolf Press

Harryette Mullen is one of contemporary poetry’s most influential voices, for her inventive language play, keen wit, formal experimentation, and pointed critique of American culture. In Regaining Unconsciousness, her first new collection in twelve years, Mullen confronts the imminent dangers of our present to sound an alarm for our future, to wake us out of our complicity and despondency: Can we, even still, find our way to our unconscious selves, beyond our capacity to harm, subdue, and consume?

In eleven taut sections written in the eleventh hour of our collective being, these poems address climate change, corporate greed, racist violence, artificial intelligence, the pollution of our oceans, individualism at the cost of mutual wellness, and the consequences of not addressing these pressing issues. Mullen imagines, as we must, our apocalypse, and yet, in an astounding feat, she does so with playfulness and wry referentiality that make these poems surprisingly buoyant, funny, and readable. Our end may be inevitable, Mullen admits, but maybe we begin with gratitude.

Harryette Mullen is the author of eight books of poetry, including Urban Tumbleweed, Recyclopedia, and Sleeping with the Dictionary, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She is Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of California–Los Angeles.

Tonya M. Foster is the author of A Swarm of Bees in High Court (Belladonna 2015) and is the George and Judy Marcus Endowed Chair in Poetry at San Francisco State. She developed and curates the “Undisciplining the Fields” series at San Francisco State.

Critical Praise for the work of Harryette Mullen

“A powerful and nuanced collection from a seasoned poet. Mullen’s ability to blend innovation with emotional depth will resonate with readers of contemporary poetry and academic collections.”—Library Journal

“Regaining Unconsciousness is just the poetry collection we need for an unstable, unpredictable world. Harryette Mullen treats us to a characteristically rich feast of sonic surprises and wicked wordplay . . . but be forewarned: some of these poems have ‘pointy teeth’ and real bite.”—Evie Shockley

“Regaining Unconsciousness unfolds like wisdoms written on the walls of a maze of mirrors. . . . No poet is more mercurial while frank, more understated while exacting, or more enlightened while inquisitive. This book is every bit as virtuosic and singular as the great Harryette Mullen.”—Terrance Hayes

“Harryette Mullen, lexical genius she is, still ain’t playing even when she plays, ears attuned to ruin’s rubato, eyes on a burning city on a burning world. And she is unamused.”—Douglas Kearney

About Undisciplining the Fields and The Poetry Center at SFSU

Undisciplining the Fields is a new conversation, reading (and sometimes performance) series that will invite writers, artists, filmmakers, and scholars from a range of fields to discuss and share their cross-disciplinary practices and thinking. Initiated by Tonya M. Foster, in collaboration with The Poetry Center, the series is envisioned as an unruly exploration of the ways that practice is developed and encouraged through interest, study, and accident; and of the ways that creativity motivates / instigates investigations of the possible.

The Poetry Center organizes public readings, performances, and poetry-related talks each year, on the San Francisco State University campus and at other Bay Area venues, featuring poets and writers from across the literary spectrum. The Poetry Center Reading Series is one of the longest consistently-running such programs in the country, with roots in the 1950s San Francisco Poetry Renaissance. Newly-documented program videos alongside historic recordings from seven decades are migrated to online access at Poetry Center Digital Archive.

Made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation