Brooklyn Poets Book Launch: Roberto Carlos Garcia

Join us for the launch of poet Roberto Carlos Garcia's new collection of selected poems, What Can I Tell You?, on February 4 at 144 Montague St and via Zoom! Doors will open for a wine reception for in-person guests at 6 PM and readings will begin at 7 PM. Poets Marwa Helal, Rio Machete Cortez, Lynne McEniry and Yesenia Montilla will open for Garcia. Book signing to follow.

Note that by attending this event, you agree to abide by our code of conduct and COVID-19 policy (see below). All in-person attendees are currently required to wear masks. Brooklyn Poets reserves the right to dismiss from our programs any participant found to be in violation of these policies. Thank you for respecting our community.

About What Can I Tell You?

Charting the personal and the political, the lyrical and the prosaic, with an intense interrogation of anti-Blackness that centers Trans-Atlantic and Latinx Blackness in all its vastness, beauty, and pride, this necessary book compiles the best of Garcia’s three poetry collections. These selected poems will introduce Garcia’s work to a broader audience. Like the poem it takes its title from, What Can I Tell You conveys a poet wrestling with what it means to make poetry from the bread of life. At times formal and playful, and at others deadly serious, Garcia’s full range of themes and obsessions is on full display within its pages.

About the Author

Roberto Carlos Garcia writes about the Afro-Latinx and Afro-Diasporic experience. His work has been published widely in places like Poetry, the Root, the BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT, Bettering American Poetry Vol. 3 and others. He is the author of five books, including four poetry collections—Melancolía (Cervena Barva Press, 2016); black / Maybe: An Afro Lyric (Willow Books, 2018); [Elegies] (FlowerSong Press, 2020); and the recently published What Can I Tell You: The Selected Poems of Roberto Carlos Garcia (Flowersong Press, 2022)—and one essay collection, Traveling Freely, forthcoming in 2024 from Northwestern University Press. Roberto is the founder of Get Fresh Books Publishing, a literary nonprofit.