Roque Raquel Salas Rivera w/ Quenton Baker, ALGARABÍA

Join poet, translator, and former Poet Laureate of Philadelphia, Roque Raquel Salas Rivera, for a discussion of his new collection, Algarabía: The Song of Cenex, Natural Son of the Isle Alarabíyya, a Puerto Rican trans epic that blends poetic play and speculative fiction, by a Lambda Literary Award winner. Salas Rivera is joined in conversation by fellow poet Quenton Baker.

Algarabía follows Cenex, a trans being who narrates his life while navigating the stories told on his behalf. An inhabitant of a colony of Earth in a parallel universe, Cenex leads us through his years as an experimental subject, a stay in suburbia, and not-so-far-off lands as he struggles to find a name, a body, and a stable home. His song clashes variegated sources with work by cis writers on trans figures, referencing everything from Clueless to Taino cosmology within a single line.

Algarabía inscribes an origin narrative for trans people in the face of their erasure from colonial and anti-colonial literary canons, laughing at its own survival with sharp, unserious rage.

Algarabía sigue a Cenex, un ser trans que narra su vida retrospectivamente mientras navega por las historias contadas en su nombre. Habitante de una colonia de la Tierra en un universo paralelo, Cenex nos conduce a través de sus años como sujeto experimental, una estancia suburbana, unas tierras no tan lejanas y su lucha por encontrar un cuerpo y un hogar estables. Su canto enfrenta textos de escritores cis sobre figuras trans con una variedad de fuentes, haciendo referencia a Clueless y a la cosmología taína dentro de un mismo verso.

Algarabía inscribe un mito fundacional para las personas trans frente a su exclusión de los cánones literarios coloniales y anticoloniales y se ríe de su propia supervivencia con una rabia pícara y aguda.

Roque Raquel Salas Rivera is a Puerto Rican poet and translator. The 2018-19 Poet Laureate of Philadelphia, he has received a Premio Nuevas Voces, a Juan Felipe Herrera Award, a Lambda Literary Award, and the inaugural Ambroggio Prize.

Roque Raquel Salas Rivera es un poeta y traductor puertorriqueño. El Poeta Laureado de Filadelfia del 2018-19, ha recibido los premios Nuevas Voces, Juan Felipe Herrera, Lambda, y el premio Ambroggio inaugural.

Quenton Baker is a poet, educator, and Cave Canem fellow. Their current focus is black interiority and the afterlife of slavery. Their work has appeared in The Offing, Jubilat, Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus and elsewhere. They are a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and the recipient of the Arts Innovator Award from Artist Trust. They were a Robert Rauschenberg Artist in Residence and received a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship. They are the author of ballast (Haymarket Books, 2023) and the beast comes to you as smoke (forthcoming in 2026, Haymarket Books).

Purchase a copy of Algarabía here.

Host or Publisher Elliott Bay Book Company