Description

The Leeds Library Salon is a quarterly event of talks, live art and performances, mini-lectures, and conviviality presented by Leeds Library and curated and co-produced by Renaissance One in partnership with Dr Emily Zobel Marshall

Join us for an evening of words, music, shape-shifting and storytelling by leading artists who each respond to the cultural history of the trickster through their artforms, with Dr Emily Zobel Marshall as she launches her new book American Trickster: Trauma, Tradition and Brer Rabbit (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019), prize-winning poet John Agard, narratives by Shivanee Ramlochan, Professor Andrew Warnes and performance and choreography by Nii Kwartey Owoo and Ella Mesma Company.

Our fascination with the trickster figure, whose presence is global, stems from our desire to break free from the tightly regimented structures of society, and daily living. We revel in the fantasy of the trickster whose energy and cunning knows no bounds and for whom nothing is sacred.

Wily, mercurial and anarchic, West African trickster figures Anansi and Brer Rabbit became symbols of survival and resistance in the Americas. Brought to the United States and the Caribbean by the enslaved, their stories helped to keep oral traditions alive and inspire ways to thwart and undermine the brutal plantation system.

All trickster tales demand audience participation and we invite you, the audience, to share a trickster item with us on the evening – this can be in the shape of a trickster poem, a trickster story or simply telling us what the trickster means to you.

Doors Open at 6.30pm with the event starting at 7.00pm