Edited by Adebe DeRango-Adem

June 2022

Contributors:

Donald B Campbell, Sam Cheuk, Audrey Lane Cockett, Bashar Lulu Jabbour, Kyla Jamieson, Penn Kemp, Vivian Li, Willow Loveday Little, S.A. McCormick, Sorouja Moll, Richard-Yves Sitoski, Myna Wallin, Erin Wilson, Heather J. Wood and Anna Yin.

From the introduction

The poets in this collection have made it. Individually, collectively, onwards. Made it onwards and onto these pages, made these poems of making it through.

The poems in this volume are true lighthouses in the fog. They come from myriad places and perspectives on history, global in their reach as they limn a way of surviving acts of violence both near and far, wars past and continuous, and present; the forces that have wreaked havoc on our bodies and minds and spirits in the struggle.

From the eye of the storm these poets speculate a future, however tenuous. Herein are small offerings to provide shelter in the storm, as well as a time to think, space to reconsider our present realities. In times where survival seems dim, poetry can render an opportunity to heal, affirm the struggle in and of itself; affirm the compromised body, compromised communities, the desire, however anguished, to articulate a language for being stunned by the miracle of being here to witness the world in all its suffering and continuance, its gravity and bliss.

About the Editor

Adebe DeRango-Adem served as the 2019-20 Barbara Smith Writer-in-Residence with Twelve Literary Arts, in Cleveland, Ohio. Her poem, “Vox Genus / Provectus,” was selected by poet Sonia Sanchez as the winner of the 2021 Boston Review Annual Poetry Contest, and will feature in her fourth collection, Vox Humana, out Fall 2022 with Book*hug Press.