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Tiny Talks series: SAFETY, featuring Brenda Iijima, Elizabeth Goetz, MC Hyland, Cathy de la Cruz & Merve Kayan

TINY TALKS will be a monthly series of short talks on poetry at Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop this fall. October's theme will be "SAFETY".

Poets, scholars, and others are invited to submit proposals for ten-minute talks on poetry related to the monthly theme. We encourage varied approaches—talks might address specific poems or poets, aesthetic or philosophical questions, poetic communities or occasions—and will select a combination of talks that makes each event as diverse as possible. Talk-givers will also participate in a Q&A and assign a writing prompt to the audience.

Brenda Iijima’s involvements occur at the intersections and mutations of poetry, research movement, animal studies, ecological sociology and submerged histories. She is the author of seven full-length collections of poetry and numerous chapbooks and artist’s books. She is also the editor of the eco language reader (Nightboat Books and PP@YYL). She is the editor of Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, located in Brooklyn, NY (http://yoyolabs.com/).

Elizabeth Goetz teaches English at Hunter College and is working on her dissertation at the CUNY Graduate Center

MC Hyland holds MFAs in Poetry and Book Arts from the University of Alabama and is a PhD candidate at New York University. She is a former Director of Adult and Artist Programs at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and the founding editor of DoubleCross Press. Her poetry has been published in several chapbooks, including the forthcoming THE END PART ONE (Magic Helicopter Press), and the poetry collection Neveragainland (Lowbrow Press), and her reviews have been published in Rain Taxi, Sink Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn.

Cathy de la Cruz is a filmmaker, performer and writer born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. She has an MFA in Visual Arts from UC-San Diego and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona. Currently she resides in New York City. Her first collection of poetry is forthcoming this year from Spooky Girlfriend Press.

Merve Kayan grew up in Turkey and started making films in Ohio where she went to college. She received her MFA in Visual Arts at University of California, San Diego in 2010 and finished her first feature film soon after. She has exhibited her films and videos at International Film Festival Rotterdam, The Berlinale, TIFF Bell Lightbox and Istanbul Modern Art Museum. She continues to make films in different genres and lengths and tries to write for film and culture magazines regularly.