Scarlett Sabet & Janaka Stucky

reading from new works

Scarlett Sabet is a London based poet and performer. She wrote, directed and starred in her poetic short film “Burning” which was produced by BAFTA winning producer Charlie Hanson in 2012. Her first collection “Rocking Underground” was launched with a reading at the Chelsea Arts Club in November 2014. Her second collection “The Lock And The Key” was launched with a reading at Shakespeare and Company in Paris in July 2016. In October 2016 GQ online released a video of Scarlett performing her poem Feathers at Leighton House to celebrate National Poetry Day. In January 2017 Scarlett was interviewed and gave a reading for the radio program “Van Morrison And Me” hosted by journalist John McCarthy for the BBC World Service, also featuring Sir Van Morrison, Brian Keenan and novelist Ian Rankin. In April 2017, Scarlett was invited by poet and Professor Dr. Dan Chiasson to give a reading at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. In December 2017 Scarlett gave a reading and her poems were exhibited alongside acclaimed photographer Jim Marshall’s work for the Peace and Light exhibition at The Troubadour in London. Scarlett has given poetry readings at the Aspects Literary Festival, and No Alibi’s bookshop in Belfast, The Troubadour in London, the William Morris Gallery, the World’s End Bookshop, Burberry, The Groucho Club, Atlantis Bookshop. Scarlett has read at KGB, Bowery Poetry and Berl’s bookshop in New York. Sir Van Morrison commented on Scarlett’s poetry: “”What strikes me about Scarlett’s work it that it’s very cutting edge and it’s making poetry interesting again. I love both the intensity and the spiritual aspect she conveys.” Scarlett is currently working on her third collection of poetry which will be released in Spring 2018.

Janaka Stucky is an American poet, performer, and publisher. The founding editor of Black Ocean, as well as the annual poetry journal, Handsome, he is also the author of a few poetry collections. His poems have appeared in such journals as Denver Quarterly, Fence and North American Review, and his articles have been published by The Huffington Post and The Poetry Foundation. He is a two-time National Haiku Champion and in 2010 he was voted “Boston’s Best Poet” in The Boston Phoenix.

In 2015 Jack White’s Third Man Records launched a new publishing imprint, Third Man Books, and chose Janaka’s full-length poetry collection, The Truth Is We Are Perfect, as their inaugural title. Janaka’s poems are at once incantatory, mystic, and epigrammatic. His esoteric & occult influences, combined with a mesmeric approach to performance, create an almost ecstatic presence on stage.

“Stucky’s raw works … give a dreamlike power to an antinomian religion of erotic love”

—Publishers Weekly

“He pulls from Eastern religious texts, mysticism, and the occult, and casts dirty, hallucinatory images onto graceful lines about love, resulting in a collection that is empathetic, nuanced, and wild.”

—The Kenyon Review

“Stucky’s verse has the power of the best East European poets—some of his poems seem to be perfect, magnificent, and instantly anthologizable. He is a forceful, cogent, incisive phrase-maker.”

—Bill Knott

“Stucky has catapulted into the firmament of my favorite ecstatic writers alongside Diane di Prima, Bill Callahan, Hafiz, e.e. cummings, and Larkin Grimm.”

—Phantasmaphile

“The yearning in these poems is awash in dense, spiritual sexuality buffeted by time and the mishandling of promises and breakable bonds.”

—apt Journal