Untitled, March 2007

This collection supports and promotes awareness to the important mission and framework of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition's focus on the lasting power of the written word and the arts in support of the free expression of ideas, the preservation of shared cultural spaces, and the importance of responding to attacks, both overt and subtle, on artists, writers, and academics working under oppressive regimes or in zones of conflict, despite the destruction of that literary/cultural content.

"Literature helps us connect with human beings; it allows us to see and be seen within a larger framework of complexities. This framework is helpful for grasping a richer understanding of social, political and cultural questions - questions dominant narratives don't necessarily ask or answer. Language is the connective tissue that allows us to resist barriers of thought and experience. I attempt here to provide material opposition to binary ways of thinking about identity and difference - binary modes of being that I believe lead to events like the bombing of Al-Mutanabbi Street. Untitled, March 2007 responds to Al-Mutanabbi Street's history by way of a meditation on language, human connection, and the (im)possibilities of witness"--Statement from the Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

Deborah Poe's poetry collections include the Last will be stone, too (Stockport Flats), Elements (Stockport Flats), and Our Parenthetical Ontology (CustomWords), as well as a novella in verse, Hélène (Furniture Press). Her visual work - including video and handmade books - has appeared with the University of Arizona Poetry Center's Poetry Off the Page Symposium (Tucson), the Handmade/Homemade Sister Exhibit at Brodsky Gallery (Philadelphia), and ONN/OF 'a light festival' (Seattle). Online exhibits of her visual and text work include Lex-ICON, Yew Journal, PEEP/SHOW, Elective Affinities, The Volta's Medium, and Trickhouse.