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Earth, Fire, Voice: An Evening with Leo Boix and Manuel Iris

,Frobisher Auditorium 1
The corner of a large installation made of soil and clay. It is ovular with an open patio in the middle. One woman in a white dress walks around the perimeter, and the second woman in an emerald green coat is inside the central patio.

Join poets Leo Boix and Manuel Iris for a powerful evening of readings and conversation, presented alongside Delcy Morelos' major commission in our Sculpture Court.

Set in dialogue with Morelos’ immersive installation where soil, scent, and memory converge, this event invites you to move between land and language, body and voice. Like Morelos’ work, which reclaims the earth as a site of history, healing, and resistance, Leo Boix and Manuel Iris write from perspectives that blur the boundaries between the personal and the communal.

Iris traces migration, fire, and survival through layered temporalities in which myth, ecology, and human experience intertwine. Boix’s poetry, rooted in queer identity and diasporic experience, explores displacement and belonging with a sensuous, elemental lyricism. Together, their work opens a porous space – echoing Morelos’ installation – where histories seep through soil, voices reverberate across borders, and the human body becomes inseparable from the land it inhabits.

Tagged with: Art & design Talks & events

The conversation will last approximately 1 hour, followed by a 30-minute audience Q&A.

The Delcy Morelos Commission has received generous Leading Philanthropic support from the Bukhman Foundation and major support from the Cheng-Lan Foundation and Destination Partner, Culture Mile BID. Additional support from The Ampersand Foundation, the Barbican Commissioning Council, Will Palley and Marian Goodman Gallery.

Founding members of the Commissioning Council include: Anastasia Bukhman/Bukhman Foundation, Stephanie Camu, Aarti Lohia/SP Lohia Foundation, Mark and Dana Strong, Tia Collection and Brian Yue & Claire Bi/Cheng-Lan Foundation.

Our public commissioning programme is generously funded by the Cheng-Lan Foundation's Common Ground initiative as part of a multi-year partnership.

This event is kindly hosted by the Cheng-Lan Foundation.

Leading Supporter
The Bukhman Foundation logo - a black line graphic resembling a flower on the left, and Bukhman Foundation written on the right.
Major Supporter
The Cheng-Lan Foundation logo
Destination Partner
Culture Mile Bid logo
Additional Support
Ampersand Foundation

Biographies

Manuel Iris

Manuel Iris is a bilingual, Mexico-born American poet and author of six poetry collections that have gained national and international recognition. In the US, he has served as Poet Laureate of the City of Cincinnati, Ohio; writer-in-residence at the Cincinnati Public Library; and writer-in-residence at Thomas More University. In 2021, he was named a member of Mexico’s National System of Art Creators. In 2025, Iris received the Ambroggio Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets for his book The Whole Earth is a Garden of Monsters/Toda la tierra es un jardín de monstruos.

 

Leo Boix 

Leo Boix is a bilingual Latinx poet, born in Argentina and based in London. His second collection, Southernmost: Sonnets (Chatto & Windus, 2025), was shortlisted for the Forward Prizes and named book of the year by The Guardian, the Daily Telegraph and The Week. Boix is the editor and lead translator of Hemisferio Cuir (Fourteen Publishing, 2025), which introduces English readers to young queer Latin American voices. He co-directs Un Nuevo Sol, nurturing Latinx writers in the UK. Boix is the recipient of the Bart Wolffe Poetry Prize, the Keats-Shelley Prize, and a PEN Award.

Frobisher Auditorium 1

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