Poet & Rocker Sadie Dupuis Reads From Her New Book During the WTJU Rock Marathon
Date: 04/17/2023
Time: 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Guitarist, songwriter & singer of rock band Speedy Ortiz, Sadie Dupuis, will read from her new poetry collection Cry Perfume on the WTJU Stage from 7 – 8 p.m. on the first evening of the WTJU Rock Marathon, Monday, April 17. This reading is open to the public and will precede Sadie and DJ Al’s special fundraising program focusing on poets who rock that will broadcast on 91.1 FM (or streaming at wtju.net) from 8 – 10 p.m. (Patti Smith! Lydia Tomkiw! Phil Lynott!).
In addition to Speedy Ortiz, Sadie Dupuis is the producer & multi-instrumentalist behind pop project Sad13. Sadie heads the record label Wax Nine, edits its poetry journal, and has written for outlets including Spin, Tape Op, and Playboy. She holds an MFA in poetry from UMass Amherst, where she also taught writing. “Mouthguard,” her first book, was published in 2018 (Gramma); “Cry Perfume,” a second poetry collection, released October 2022 via Black Ocean. Her most recent studio album is Sad13’s “Haunted Painting” (2020). She is an organizer with the Union of Musicians & Allied Workers and its local UMAW Philly.
The title of Cry Perfume is an imperative to bottle sorrow in a beautiful vessel and shed the chemicals that cloud your sight. Written over a four-year period on tour and after losing loved ones and peers to overdose, Dupuis funneled complicated grief into harm reduction advocacy, working to fundraise for and distribute overdose prevention resources in venues internationally.
The slick performativity of pop, punk humor, electronic glitch and sampling, and the surprising leaps of improvisation influence these poems, but beyond music, these poems are informed by Dupuis’s larger concerns about justice and organizing. Cry Perfume is a hopeful but realistic inventory of the virtues and evils that emerge when arts and tech collide. Those dualities are cloaked in the same sparkling fragrance, and there are twinned pleasures and regrets in parting the smokescreen.
Learn more about the WTJU Rock Marathon (and please donate!):
Schedule: wtju.net/marathon
Listen: wtju.net/player
Give: wtju.net/donate
Thank You Gifts: wtju.net/premiums/
