Poetry Reading | Youmna Chlala, Megan Fernandes, and Christian Campbell | Organized by Omar Berrada
Since its founding in 1978, the Asilah Cultural Moussem has always advocated for art’s imbrication in civic life on a local scale and, at the same time, for an internationalist and interdisciplinary understanding of art practice. Poetry was always a central part of this endeavor. To this day, the Moussem awards two poetry prizes: one for young Arab poets, named after Iraqi writer Buland Al-Haidari; and one for African poetry, named after Congolese writer Tchicaya U Tam'si who attended the Moussem every summer from 1981 until he died in 1989.
In conjunction with the Asilah Oui: Robert Blackburn in Morocco exhibition, we invite you to listen to three poets whose singular aesthetics draw from multiple poetic traditions and resonate deeply with visual expression: Youmna Chlala, Megan Fernandes, and Christian Campbell.
Megan Fernandes is the author of The Kingdom and After (Tightrope Books), Good Boys and I Do Everything I’m Told (Tin House), and the forthcoming Fernandes & I (Graywolf Press). Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, and The Kenyon Review, among other publications. Her poetry and essays engage questions of queer intimacy and race. Fernandes has collaborated with artists for projects at the Venice Biennale, Tate Modern, and the ICA London. She is an Associate Professor of English at Lafayette College and teaches in the MFA program at New York University.
Youmna Chlala was born in Beirut and is based in New York. She is the author of the poetry collection, The Paper Camera (Litmus Press) and the recipient of an O. Henry Award and a Joseph Henry Jackson Award. In her current series The Museum of Future Memories, her artwork imagines what will happen when the horizon line disappears. She has exhibited widely including at the Malmö Konstmuseum, Hayward Gallery, Drawing Center, Wanås Konst, Concrete Gallery and MAK Center for Art and Architecture. She participated in the 60th Venice Biennale, 33rd Bienal de São Paulo, LIAF Biennial in Norway, and 11th Performa Biennial. She is also co-editor of the Spatial Species series at Coffee House Press.
Christian Campbell is a Trinidadian Bahamian poet, essayist and cultural critic working at the intersection of literature, history, visual art and performance. He is the author of Running the Dusk (Peepal Tree Press, 2010), which was translated into Spanish in Cuba as Correr el Crepúsculo (Ediciones Santiago, 2015). His work has been published widely in journals, anthologies and artist monographs internationally, and he won the Art Writing Award from the Ontario Association of Art Galleries for his work on Jean-Michel Basquiat. He was the 2023-24 Visiting Fellow at the American Library in Paris and in 2026, he was invited to participate in the “Poetry Caravan,” a central performance at the 61st International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. Campbell divides his time between New York City and Los Angeles, where he teaches in the Program in Creative Writing and Literature at USC.
Omar Berrada is a writer and curator whose work focuses on the politics of translation and intergenerational transmission. He is the author of the chapbook Clonal Hum (Obultra, 2020), and the (co-)editor of several volumes, including Another Room to Live In: 15 Contemporary Arab Poets (Litmus, 2024). His writing was featured in numerous exhibition catalogs, magazines and anthologies, including Frieze, Bidoun, Mizna, Asymptote, and The University of California Book of North African Literature (UC Press, 2012). Born and raised in Casablanca, he currently lives in New York.