Wordspace: Lisa Gill & Purvi Shah

New Rivers Press authors Lisa Gill and Purvi Shah will celebrate their recent book releases as well as honor and explore their musical influences. New York poet Purvi Shah’s first collection of poetry, Terrain Tracks, won the 2005 Many Voices Project prize from New Rivers Press. Born in Ahmadabad, India, Shah currently lives in New York City and serves as Executive Director of Sakhi for South Asian Women, a community-based anti-domestic violence organization. She also studies Kathak dance. This traditional 16 -beat North Indian dance form informs her poetry and will be explored with Sama Duo featuring Mustafa Stefan Dill, sarod & oud, and Jefferson Voorhees, pakawaj & tar. New Mexico poet Lisa Gill recently won a 2007 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry. In this show she will highlight a selection from Mortar & Pestle, her response to being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, as well as poems from Dream Kinematics, the project she is working on for the NEA. Tonight’s first set will feature poetry readings by Gill and Shah with a musical bridge provided by J.A.Deane (internationally recognized sound designer and director of the Out of Context ensemble), Jefferson Voorhees, and Mustafa Stefan Dill leading to a second set of musical/verbal collaborations.

$15/$10 Members. Available in advance, by phone or in person, at the Outpost Performance Space (268-0044).