On Thursday, April 27th, at 1PM, the Centre for Expanded Poetics at Concordia University will host a reading by the Palestinian poet Olivia Elias for the launch the English translation of her recent book Chaos, Crossing. This event will be facilitated by Montréal-based artists and writers Hoda Adra and Alexei Perry Cox, who will introduce and open a conversation on her work.

Olivia Elias is a poet of the Palestinian diaspora, born in Haifa in 1944, and her work is characterized by terse language and a deep sensitivity to the Palestinian cause. Kareem James Abu-Zeid's translation of Chaos, Crossing conveys the tension and urgency in Elias’s poetry, in which each word asks us to stop and approach one of her central questions: is it possible that too much rage kills rage? This conversation will be in English, French and Arabic.