Reading from her debut poetry collection, Bittering the Wound—a first-person retelling of the 2014 Ferguson uprising—and other recent works, Jacqui Germain explores and interrogates periods of political rupture, alongside the related histories, revelations, interiorities, anxieties, and generative possibilities in response to Katherine Simóne Reynolds’ Graham Foundation Fellowship exhibition, A different kind of tender and the practice of overhealing. Part documentation, part conjuring, Bittering the Wound works to share the narrative of the event with more complexity, audacity, care, and specificity than public media accounts typically allow. Here, Germain’s words echo Reynolds’ work on surveillance, vulnerability, and different manifestations of healing. 

This event will take place within the exhibition in the first-floor galleries and will be followed by a reception. Copies of Bittering the Wound will be available for purchase in the Graham Foundation Bookshop.

Jacqui Germain is a poet and journalist living and working in St. Louis, Missouri. Her debut full-length poetry collection, Bittering the Wound (Autumn House Press, 2022), was selected by Douglas Kearny for the 2021 Center for African American Poetry and Poetics book prize. Germain's poems have been published in The Offing, Poem-A-Day, Muzzle Magazine, The Rumpus, Bettering American Poetry, and elsewhere, in addition to being anthologized in several texts. She has received poetry fellowships from the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission, Jack Jones Literary Arts, and Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. Her chapbook, When the Ghosts Come Ashore, was published in 2016 through Button Poetry and Exploding Pinecone Press. Germain’s journalism, original reporting, political commentary, and feature profiles have been published in The Nation, The Guardian, VICE, Artsy, and more. She served as Teen Vogue's Economic Security Project journalism fellow, reporting for the outlet’s politics section.

For more information on the exhibition, A different kind of tender and the practice of overhealing, click here.