A Weekend of Verse in Honor of Mexican Independence

Posted in Programs and Events on September 14 2015, by Lansing Moore

Help us kick off a new season of FRIDA KAHLO: Art Garden, Life this weekend at NYBG with a festive celebration of Mexican independence! This Wednesday, September 16, is Mexico’s Independence Day. On September 19 & 20, come to the Garden for ¡Viva México! An Independence Day Celebration, with two days of live music and dance, whimsical puppets, film screenings, and a very special poetry reading with Rachel Eliza Griffiths.

The talented and popular performers of Mariachi Flor de Toloache, New York’s “first and only established female mariachi band,” return to the Garden along with the traditional dancers of Calpulli Danza Mexicana for a fun-filled weekend of live performances. Internationally-known Bronx artist Lucrecia Novoa joins the festivities with her larger-than-life Monarch Butterfly puppets. Break out your creative side and make your own flower crown inspired by Frida at this public workshop on the Conservatory lawn! At Shop in the Garden, watch women artisans from Oaxaca demonstrate their age-old techniques in weaving and embroidery.

Visitors to FRIDA KAHLO have had their experience enhanced all summer by the poems of Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz, displayed adjacent to the Haupt Conservatory amid the seasonal beauty of the Garden’s own collections. As part of Poetry for Every Season—co-presented with the Poetry Society of America—the Garden is thrilled to welcome the poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths to present a special reading of his work, as well as her own, on September 19.

Drawing inspiration from the gardens and exhibition around her, Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a poet and photographer whose literary and visual work has been widely published in journals, magazines, anthologies, and periodicals including Callaloo, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Writer’s Chronicle, Black Arts Quarterly, African American Review, American Poetry Review, and many others. Her recent full-length collection, Mule & Pear (New Issues Poetry & Prose/2011), was selected for the 2012 Inaugural Poetry Award by the Black Caucus American Library Association.

Plan your visit and come celebrate with us! And if you’re a Member, you can join in the festivities for free—which is all the more reason to join or renew today.