High Desert: André Naffis-Sahely

High Desert is a psychedelic journal of end-times and an ode to the American Southwest. Exploring such key events as the First Red Scare, the Tulsa Race Massacre and the West Coast’s wildfire epidemic, Naffis-Sahely’s reflections on class, race, and nationalism chart the region’s hidden histories from the Spanish Colonial Era to the recent pandemic. The poems in High Desert also revel in their rootlessness, as the author shifts his gaze outside of the US, travelling from Venice and Florence to Chittagong and St Petersburg, tackling our turbulent times and the depths of its problems in searing, extraordinary poems of witness and vision.

Author André Naffis-Sahely will be launching his collection at Manchester Poetry Library with readings from the book, and a discussion with Adam O’Riordan, Reader at the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University.

6.30pm doors open/drinks. 7pm start.