Poet-Abolitionist Antoinette Cooper in Conversation with Iain Pollock

The body never forgets.

Join us for an evening of poetry and conversation between Antoinette Cooper and acclaimed poet Iain Pollock as they explore themes of body, memory, and witness in their work. This program will feature Antoinette’s first book of poetry - UNRULY - publishing on January 25, 2025.

Copies of Antoinette’s and Iain’s books will be available for purchase and signing.

This event is free to attend; however, we ask for RSVPs so we can plan accordingly.

About Antoinette

Antoinette Cooper is a poet and collective trauma facilitator whose work explores the intersections of racial identity, healing, and embodied wisdom. Her documentary poetry collection UNRULY (Legacy Book Press LLC, 2025) examines intergenerational trauma and the resilience of Black women's bodies. Cooper's work has appeared in The Poetry Foundation, Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, and The Amistad Literary Arts Journal. She is the founder of Black Exhale, a nonprofit dedicated to creating sanctuary spaces for the liberated Black body. Her recent honors include the LMCC Workspace Residency and grants from the Café Royal Cultural Foundation.

About UNRULY

UNRULY honors the Black female body as a site of profound resilience and complex histories. In this groundbreaking debut, Antoinette Cooper weaves poetry, memoir, and documentary evidence into an ineffable work of embodied storytelling. With uncompromising honesty and lyrical precision, Cooper explores intimate experiences of Black women—from historical medical abuses to contemporary health disparities, intergenerational trauma, and personal encounters with healing. This revelatory collection offers language to articulate the full spectrum of Black women's embodied realities—in all their pain, power, and possibility.

About Iain Haley Pollock

Iain Haley Pollock is the author of three poetry collections, Spit Back a Boy (2011), Ghost, Like a Place (Alice James, 2018), and the forthcoming All the Possible Bodies (Alice James, September 2025).  Pollock has received several honors for his work including the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, a 2023 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Poetry, the Bim Ramke Prize for Poetry from Denver Quarterly, and a nomination for an NAACP Image Award.  He directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Manhattanville University in Purchase, NY.