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Poet Robin Coste Lewis will read from her 2015 National Book Award-winning collection “Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems” at The New Orleans Museum of Art, Friday (Jan. 8) from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m., followed by a book signing until 8.
Lewis was born in Compton, Calif., though her press biography states that her family is from New Orleans. Based on reviews, Lewis’ poetry collection boldly confronts the stereotyping of black women past and present, in many cases, turning to art historical references for information and insights.
In his New York Times review, Dwight Garner wrote that “‘Voyage of the Sable Venus’… is a taut book of responses to lunatic cultural ideas of many sorts. Its thrilling centerpiece is its 79-page title poem, consists almost entirely of the titles of Western artworks, spread over some 40,000 years, which comment on the black female figure.”
Lewis’ appearance is in conjunction with the New Orleans Museum of Art’s exhibition “Visions of US: American Art at NOMA.”
In his New Yorker review, Dan Chiasson describes the painting that Lewis chose as the title her epic poem and poetry collection, this way: “‘Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems’ derives its title from a notorious eighteenth-century engraving by Thomas Stothard, ‘The Voyage of the Sable Venus from Angola to the West Indies.’ The image was slave-trade propaganda: It shows an African woman posed like Botticelli’s Venus on a weirdly upholstered half shell.”
According to a story in The Guardian by Angela Chen, Lewis aspired to be a writer from childhood, but she suffered an accident in her youth that caused brain damage and difficulty with reading. Undaunted, Lewis turned that impediment to her advantage with long contemplation of short passages of text, which led to a life-long appreciation of language, especially poetry.
As Chen wrote: “The preoccupations and obsessions in Voyage – bodies, art, race – are ones that have haunted Lewis since she was a child, and which then led her to study first comparative literature as an undergrad and then receive a master’s degree in Sanskrit from Harvard. Sanskrit called to her because it was one of the oldest languages in the world and another route to ‘find out what was going on in literature all the way back with representations of race.'”
Lewis’s reading is included with museum admission: Adults, $10; seniors $8; children (7-17), $6. NOMA is located at One Collins Diboll Circle at the south end of City Park. For more informationvisit the museum website or phone 504.658.4100.