Join us for an evening of poetry readings in series with the 30th Poets House Showcase, a literary exhibition and reading series that captures the breadth of contemporary poetry publishing. Fargo Nissim Tbakhi will read from TERROR COUNTER, joined by Ahmad Almallah, Mandy Shunnarah, and Lena Khalaf Tuffaha.
The Showcase is a literary exhibition and reading series dedicated to the art and joy of published poetry all in one room. Collecting every type of poetry from every type of publisher, from hand-threaded zines to books from large commercial houses, this winter’s exhibition includes poetry works from 2024 and 2025, including a wide range of chapbooks, broadsides, translated works, and multilingual volumes.
Moving through sections of varying experimentalism, from an invented visual form (the Gazan Tunnel) to all-caps queer ecstatic, Fargo Nissim Tbakhi here attempts to carve out a space for the negotiation of an alternative subjecthood.
The voices in this collection are driven by despair, futility, utopia, vulnerability and the spirit of a collective liberation; they move in search of a lyrical voice which can inhabit both the paranoid preservationist mode that facilitates Palestinian survival, and the imaginative possibilities that might make possible Palestinian life. TERROR COUNTER asks: where and how might a Palestinian subject escape the public consumption of American letters? And, ultimately, how can we continue to love each other amidst the endless terror of the colonial world?
Fargo Nissim Tbakhi is a Palestinian performance artist.