On Friday, April 2nd from 7:30 to 9:00 – San Francisco Zen Center, 300 Page Street, San Francisco, California. 415-863-3136

There is a special presentation during the exhibition opening of the al-Mutanabbi Street Broadside project at the San Francisco Zen Center. Two of our artists and printers, Bill Denham and Bettina Pauly, will be among the readers.

Bill will be sharing The Diameter of the Bomb, a poem by Yehuda Amichai, translated by Chana Block. A broadside of this poem was designed and illustrated by Kim Vanderheiden, and printed and assembeled by Bill. It’s an interactive piece. A ring of black rays hug the poem and image. To view them, the reader must unfold the rays, exploding the broadside.

Bettina Pauly will be reading a translation from Abdul Satar, shown in the documentary: A Candle for the Shabandar Cafe, Baghdad, 2007, which corresponds with her broadside – a powerful piece that’s been two years in the making. It features testimony about the bombing in Arabic and English, with a hole carefully burned out of the center, between the two languages. Across the hole, the broadside is stitched back together.

Both are very powerful pieces, and are on display at the Zen Center, along with 130 other works commemorating the 2007 package bombing of al-Mutanabbi Street – a street of booksellers in Baghdad; a street renown intellectual exploration and freedom of thought and speech.

The event is free and open to the public. Donations and purchases of broadsides benefit Doctors Without Borders.