Patrick Rosal
Visiting Poet
Award-winning author and riveting performer, Patrick Rosal thrills with his speed and tenderness and daring. Political and personal are inextricably entwined in poems that can’t help singing, shocking, instructing. Blending a New Jersey childhood with his Filipino heritage, he brings irrepressible heart and intelligence to tales of love, violence, and identity. Junot Diaz pronounced Rosal’s thrilling debut, Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive, “a book from whose pages you’ll emerge shaken, heartbroken, annealed, made new.”
The son of immigrants, Rosal is a life-long amateur musician, an old-school b-boy and DJ. In a 2022 interview with Willie Perdomo in The Common, Rosal reflected that “sound and movement are both phenomena and technology of my travels towards the soulful by way of listening to whoever is in the room, to myself, to those who brought us, to the tomorrow version of us…sound connects, through mutual presence and attention.” While he worked in television, video, and corporate communications, Rosal continued practice as an amateur musician and composer. He is currently creating art songs and exploring Afro-Cuban percussion, sacred music, and Filipino folkloric traditions. He serves as the inaugural Campus Director of the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers-Camden, where he’s also a Distinguished Professor of English.
Rosal is the author of five collections of poems, most recently The Last Thing: New and Selected Poems (Persea, 2021) winner of the William Carlos Williams Book Award. His accolades include Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. His work appears in The New York Times and Best American Poetry. Whether performing at Lincoln Center, the Whitney Museum, or international venues from London to the Philippines, Rosal continues to inspire audiences with his powerful blend of artistic expression and cultural insight.
Rosal will read at Leo Weinstein Auditorium in Wright Hall on Tuesday, April 29, 2025 at 7 p.m. A livestream will be available on the BDPC YouTube page.