Anna Goodman Herrick
A Speaker is a Wilderness: Poems on the Sacred Path from Broken to Whole - Book Release Party with Anna Goodman Herrick
This poetry addresses the interconnection of individual, communal, and global trauma, and healing, towards collective liberation. In Hebrew, the words for wilderness, speaker, and speaks are spelled the same and share the same root letters. Anna Goodman Herrick's title, from a poem in the collection, references the Torah's BaMidbar (in the wilderness or desert) and her ancestor's ritual practice of elevating etymology, roots, and folk word associations as spiritual meditation.
Anna Goodman Herrick weaves Jewish sacred texts, mysticism, human rights, and a modern voice of radical love, taking readers on a path of healing from brokenness to wholeness.
The author returns to her roots and original wholeness through reconnecting language: "Wilderness speaks / A speaker is a wilderness." Goodman Herrick survived sexual assault in her teens by a classmate, and left home at 14. The grandchild of an Auschwitz survivor, she's been a New York City club kid, MTV writer-producer, a peacemaker around the world, nun at a Vedanta convent, and student of Chassidic rabbis. This expansiveness lives in her poems. The book invites readers to reconsider prayer and blessing as an ongoing, fluid, language, holding space for the reverent and irreverent as prophetic.
Click here to pre-order the book from Afikomen Bookshop. Books will be available at the event for purchase and signing.
Wednesday June 26, 2024
7:00pm Doors Open & Live Music
7:30pm - 9:00pm Main Event
Please arrive early, space is limited.
Book signing and light reception to follow.
About the Author
Anna Goodman Herrick works at the intersection of spirituality, sacred words, and human rights. She is a writer, poet, filmmaker, and interdisciplinary artist. Anna has performed her poetry across the U.S., including at the Emily Dickinson Museum's Phosphorescence Poetry Reading Series, presenting "contemporary creativity that echoes Dickinson's own revolutionary poetic voice." She has performed her poetry at the El Paso border for Artist Uprising with V (formerly Eve Ensler), Bloomsday on Broadway and Radio Bloomsday, and at the Theopoetics Conference. Her recent poetry is included in Rattle, The Ekphrastic Review, Hevria Magazine, and Ritualwell. She has created work for television and branded content for Sony, ABC Family, Oprah Winfrey Network, and MTV and shared her work at the Library of Congress, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and in film, stage, museums and galleries nationwide. For more information visit: Instagram @annagoodmanherrick.
Reviews
"Anna Goodman Herrick is a rising star, a poet, and a bard well beyond her years in wisdom and vision. Her book A Speaker Is a Wilderness brings tears of recognition and awe to my eyes every time I open it." --Rabbi Dr. Tirzah Firestone, author of Wounds into Wisdom