In the Open Air

This series was curated by award-winning poet, essayist, and creative strategist Aurielle Marie. With this series, Aurielle has brought together work that bridges politics, culture, and theory.

Called the world's largest open-air prison, Gaza continues to be assaulted by the settler colonial project of Israel, bombed by US artillery and Western bloodlust. In Sudan, open graves render whole communities into sites of mourning. And on the southeast side of Atlanta, the State's commitment to Empire clears trees to build a monument to militarization in a forest known as the lungs of the city. 

The air flows around us as we survive these violences; it is not a static witness. It works with the trees in Weelaunee to keep us breathing, it carries our songs of resistance over the walls in occupied Palestine. Air feeds life, feeds fire, and pushes at our back as we march, keeping us going. Poems, too, are not static. Our poems are building material–a way to articulate new possibilities, deconstruct violence, and alchemize our suffering into useful matter. But what should rise from the open air in place of so much loss and violence? Well, that is up to us.

As Aurielle writes in the introductory interview with Saul Williams, "I'm interested in what poetics offers us by way of strategy. I'm interested in what the mechanics of world-building look like for writers against genocide and fascism. I'm interested in the dreams and fascinations of poets who write as a means of liberation… This folio invites you to stand with us, your left hand touching the rough oak trees of Weelaunee, and your right hand holding a branch from Gaza's many olive trees. Come, consider how even the air you inhale moves between us the same way… Holding us together as we survive unthinkable circumstances. "