With little experience witnessing performance art for myself, I was excited to see what would happen during “A Reading with Gabrielle Civil.” Gathering in the Community Foundation Theater on Monday, students and faculty got to see Civil read her poetry and display her past performance art. Civil is a Black feminist poet, writer and artist who teaches writing and performance at the California Institute of the Arts. She is also the author of the performance memoirs Swallow the Fish, Experiments in Joy, In & Out of Place and the déjà vu, and contributed to the new literary magazine at Kenyon, shadow doesn’t ask. 

According to her website, the aim of Civil’s work is to open up space: “My performance art work arrives at the intersection of installation, conceptual art and poetry. I find or create environments, enter them, and make things happen — with objects, language, landscape, often other people, and always, always my body.” 

Civil was introduced by Robert P. Hubbard Assistant Professor of Poetry Michael Leong, who described her work as something that doesn’t just open up space but also opens up time. Time is a large theme not just in Civil’s reading but also in much of her performance art and poetry. 

Civil jumped right into the reading after the introduction. Holding her book In & Out of Place, she walked around the front of the room, glancing up as if to speak directly to each audience member. During the readings of her poetry from her books In & Out of Place, the déja vu and her contribution to shadow doesn’t ask, she often incorporated the audience in some way. At one point, she asked the crowd, “Are you ready,” something she asks in one of her poems. Further along in the reading, she asked the audience to close their eyes and to picture something (a place, object or person) they consider a creative ancestor. 

Only a few minutes into her reading, Civil’s messages became clear to the audience. “I was thinking a lot as I was putting these materials together, not just about intersections of poetry, performance and translation, but also about ancestors,” she said. “And how we can call on our creative ancestors to nourish us, replenish us and fortify us for the work and the play that we need to do today.” Ancestry became a large theme in much of what she shared with the audience, but also the themes of time, ritual and intersectionality.   

Using the space of the Community Foundation Theater perfectly, Civil incorporated the screen behind her into the reading. She also showed pictures of herself and her past performances, her notebook, her friends, her creative ancestors such as Notzake Shange (a Black feminist poet and playwright), art like the Olmec stone heads of Mexico and at one point a video showcasing only her face titled “Hear Come the Whites.” She moved freely around the front of the room while reading, pausing during one poem to move in the four cardinal directions. 

Around halfway through the reading, Civil opened the floor for questions after having the audience talk to those next to them about a word or phrase they found interesting. Much of Civil’s humor came out during this Q&A session, such as when she responded to a question about what the translator’s purpose is by saying “to finish the translation,” laughing along with the audience before giving a more serious answer about her own work in translation. 

Another student asked a question about her own experience with knowing when a poem is finished or when it’s ready to be published, something that Civil said relates to the feeling the writer has surrounding the poem, and that it can still be ever-changing even after it is published or “done.” Civil explained the difference between needing to be done with something for a deadline rather than the artist feeling that their work is ready, which was met with many nods of agreement from the audience. 

Watching Civil read her poetry and share many different aspects of her life, whether through her poems, pictures or answers to the questions was truly an amazing way to experience her art, and something that went beyond simply reading lines on a page.