We're excited to feature Philip Metres @philipmetres.bsky.social and his poem "Ode to the Wallrunners of Gaza" this week! Read the rest of his poem and his discussion questions on our website, linked in bio.

This quote from Le Guin is also emblematic of why you can't be an "A.I. writer". The process is *everything*.

We are so excited to announce that our Special Issue with Guest Editor Sara Abou Rashed is OUT NOW, linked in our bio! We invite you to attend our Zoom Launch Party this Sunday at 2 p.m. EST, where you can hear featured authors read their work! @ruthawad.bsky.social @philipmetres.bsky.social

Renee Nicole Good (Macklin). 2020 Academy of American Poets Prize, Old Dominion University, "On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs." make room for wonder poets.org/2020-on-lear...

I am impeaching Secretary Kristi Noem, who is an incompetent leader and a disgrace to our democracy. She wreaked havoc in the Chicagoland area and has brought her reign of terror to Minneapolis. One of her rogue ICE agents shot and killed an innocent woman today. It must come to an end.

We highly recommend this brilliant interview with LISA OLSTEIN and Alina Stefanescu from the Poetry Foundation on the archival sources, erasure, and mythology in OLSTEIN’S latest collection, DISTINGUISHED OFFICE OF ECHOES! Read the full piece at shorturl.at/XyBlR

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a version of the Poetry Foundation solely built around grants felt like it "maybe should be a different organization.” www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

Documentary poetry can either amplify marginalized voices or exploit their suffering. @philipmetres.bsky.social’s DISPATCHES brings together poets wrestling with this distinction, providing crucial guidance for navigating the ethics of writing as witness. press.umich.edu/Books/D/Disp... #Poetry

What if emotion IS knowledge? @khadijahqueen.com’s RADICAL POETICS makes the case that “poetry exists as a valuable tool for understanding,” not despite its emotional resonance, but precisely because of it. press.umich.edu/Books/R/Radi... @uofmpress.bsky.social #Poetry #Books #RadicalPoetics

kind of obsessed with this custom binding for Moby dick by Susan and Chaim Ebanks at Exeter Bookbinders

How do you teach Palestinian and Israeli literature without pretending the power is equal? @philipmetres.bsky.social proposes “contrapuntal reading,” and DISPATCHES shows it in practice: what it reveals about both texts, as well as what the stakes are. press.umich.edu/Books/D/Disp... #Books

NEW: Epstein survivors release the most powerful PSA I have ever seen. Make this go viral so every member of the House of Representatives sees it.

Coming to Brooklyn November 20th @poetrysociety.org !!! poetrysociety.org/events/psa-r...

Good to see @philipmetres.bsky.social featured in The Land: thelandcle.org/stories/a-li...

It’s another deeply engaging addition to the Poets on Poetry Series, @philipmetres.bsky.social – and a great companion to your latest, DISPATCHES FROM THE LAND OF ERASURE: press.umich.edu/Books/D/Disp...

When does a poem become more than art? Frontline workers writing pandemic haiku. Layli Long Soldier rewriting congressional resolutions. YOUR HISTORICAL LOVELINESS asks what happens when poetry stops being about witness and becomes action itself. press.umich.edu/Books/Y/Your...

"Always the same story: two people, one tree, not enough land or light or love." —Philip Metres @philipmetres.bsky.social thelandcle.org/stories/a-li...

Physicists at CERN told Amy Catanzano they can use quantum theory but find it "counterintuitive.” She recognized immediately: quantum logic IS poetic logic. THE IMAGINARY PRESENT explores how poetry can reshape scientific understanding. @uofmpress.bsky.social press.umich.edu/Books/T/The-...

Can you document trauma without exploiting it? @utopiaminus.bsky.social warns that the “representation of violence can produce its own kind of violence.” In @philipmetres.bsky.social’s DISPATCHES, poets debate what documentary poetry can and can’t do for justice – and whether writing is enough.

Learn more about @philipmetres.bsky.social’s book and order your copy here: press.umich.edu/Books/D/Disp...

When Israeli forces captured Jaffa in 1948, the municipal archives vanished, erasing Palestinians' legal proof of land ownership. @philipmetres.bsky.social's DISPATCHES FROM THE LAND OF ERASURE shows how Arab poets have sought to preserve this disappeared history. press.umich.edu/Books/D/Disp...

“Sitting close to the center, not very high in the branches, / I heard it hitting the high leaves, and I was happy, // watching it happen without it happening to me.” —Marie Howe, “The Copper Beech” www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48561/...

When poets debate whether metaphor itself perpetuates harm, every image becomes an ethical choice. @philipmetres.bsky.social's DISPATCHES FROM THE LAND OF ERASURE captures these heated conversations, changing how we approach poems that engage cultural difference. press.umich.edu/Books/D/Disp...

Grateful for this work and the work of the work

Nobody who voted to confirm RFK is fit to hold public office

Host: There are new calls this morning for RFK Jr.'s resignation, and those calls coming from inside HHS itself. More than 1,000 current and former HHS workers are making this demand in a letter released this morning. They say his leadership has "put the health of all Americans at risk"

Concerned that we are losing the necessary ratio. 15% of teachers/faculty should be irretrievably strange eccentrics. Every learning experience should have some element where in later life you can reflect with former classmates about how bizarre at least one (1) class per year was.

Old Soviet joke for today: A man walks into a newsstand every day, looks around, and leaves. After a long time of this, the owner says “Can I help you find something?” “I’m looking for the obituaries.” “The obituaries are in the back of the newspaper, comrade.” “Not the one I’m looking for.”

The NRA buys off Congress. No action on guns. The oil industry buys off Congress. No action on climate. Insurance companies buy off Congress. No action on health care. The list goes on and on. Money in politics is the root of our dysfunction.

Starbucks’ CEO made 6,666x more than the company's median employee in 2024. This was the widest CEO-to-Worker pay gap in the entire S&P 500. Remember this before you order your next pumpkin spice latte.

On settler colonialism, the illusion of progress, and what actually resulted from the Oslo Accords.

“When I first arrived in Belfast, I saw both Palestinian and Israeli flags, but in different neighborhoods—the Palestinian ones in Irish nationalist areas, and Israeli ones in Protestant loyalist areas.” @philipmetres.bsky.social on Northern Irish solidarity with Palestine.

"Only when the last tree has been cut, the last river has been poisoned & the last fish been caught will they realize that they can't eat money" old Cree proverb

In a small town in County Cork, Ireland, a monument stands in appreciation to the American Choctaw Indian Tribe. Although impoverished, shortly after being forced to walk the Trail of Tears, the tribe somehow gathered $170 to send to Ireland for famine relief in 1847 [Historic Vids]

Find this film. Watch this film. It’s as great a scripted film as you will see this decade. It shows at Telluride this weekend. Seek it out. Like NoOther Land, the doc which won an Oscar last year, the distribution in the US will be impeded. Fight that. Support it. deadline.com/2025/08/osca...

Texas is a majority-minority state, yet Republicans drew maps that make white votes carry 2-3 times more political power than Black or Hispanic votes. That’s what gerrymandering does: it cracks and packs communities of color so their growing numbers translate into less representation.

By @mosabbluesky.bsky.social: "This boy is Abdullah Abu Zarqa(5...)... Abdullah was a cancer patient who missed his treatment... because of #Israel ’s inhumane siege. A few days he was evacuated. Today he passed away in a hospital in Turkey. It was too late for him." www.threads.com/@mosab_abuto...

Three hours ago, an Israeli quadcopter dropped a grenade on a group of people in Shujaeeya neighborhood in Gaza City. It killed a woman named Yousra Abu al-Kass. Note: Yousra lost her husband and two children in previous air strikes.

we used to build household shrines to Going On The Computer and it's no coincidence that as we abandoned these we started straying further from god's light

U.S. Becomes First Country To Recognize Mega-Israel — theonion.com/u-s-becomes-...

Ireland could soon ban all trade with illegal settlements, but is being bullied by Washington to give up. Sign the petition — and show Ireland the world is behind this! action.eko.org/a/ireland-pa...

This should wake up everyone who still thinks we might squeak by. And JFC @harvard.edu listen up. Your *US students* are starting to flee abroad. Not just yr international students. And dear United States: this is the way to totally reach yr end. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I am finally home again and taking a week or two to catch up on everything. Good to see this piece by @philipmetres.bsky.social at Literary Hub: lithub.com/if-god-were-...

My friend Phil Metres has been making the world make more sense through poetry and literature for a long time now. This moving piece on Chekhov is just the latest installment. I needed this. lithub.com/if-god-were-...

“If God were like Chekhov, I would be consoled.” @philipmetres.bsky.social on Gaza, wildfires, and the privileges of misery.