There’s a lot going on here at Starlight and Strategy headquarters, also known as my home and office, and in these pandemic days, my go-to Asian-Irish fusion restaurant, bar, dance club, yoga studio, greenhouse…but I digress.
The point is, Tuesday is the official publication date of my new poetry collection, Last Days.
For those following my journey in creating an alternative, anti-capitalist book launch, I’m pleased to report that we met our fundraising goal! And as I write this, more than 180 organizers, activists, cultural workers, and healers from around the country have signed up to get Last Days and Gabrielle Civil’s ( ghost gestures ) for free. We also got a lovely write up in the Boston Globe. I couldn’t be more thrilled.
And, I have a full lineup of virtual events with other BIPOC poets, including a reading with Gabrielle at the Harvard Book Store on Wednesday, 4/14 at 7pm ET. We’d love to see you come on through!
So for this new-moon missive, I am simply sending along an excerpt from the central poem of the collection, from which this newsletter got its name. This prose-poem follows a small group of revolutionaries who are taking down the Corporate empire. I hope you enjoy it and consider spreading the word about the book and this project!
From “Last Days”:
When the new recruits followed the poem to find us, we put them to work or gave them maps to others in need of their skills. We were hundreds of loose groups across the country, fashioning transformation out of starlight and strategy, spindrift and solidarity.
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I was impatient for the waking, the sharp sensation of light and promise. I thought I understood.
But there was still so much to learn. Wave reminded me of the libraries they had shut down years ago, their floors like silk, books heavy with promise. That’s where we went: picking the locks, scraping away the dust, memorizing what we could.
Power grids, water-sewer lines, and fiber-optic cables snaked their way across the city. We became deft in mapping and coordinates, diversion and distraction. We discovered the patterns the Corporation relied on, found the back doors, planted the traps with care.
Creating new economies in the heart of capital required cunning and poetic imagination. We knew we were being watched when the NICE drones paused above our fire escape.
But cooking and dancing were not yet crimes. We could plan just as well stirring the pot in three-four time as in stillness around the kitchen table.
Patience is in the living. Time opens out to you. We hummed and we sang. We simmered soup and kneaded flour and water. We mapped out the next tactics.
Note: The italicized line is by Claudia Rankine.
Community/Announcements
Another BIPOC writer releasing a new book this month is Rajiv Mohabir. I can’t wait to read his Antiman.
Winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Rajiv Mohabir’s Antiman is an impassioned, genre-blending memoir that navigates the fraught constellations of race, sexuality, and cultural heritage that have shaped his experiences as an Indo-Guyanese queer poet and immigrant to the United States. Rajiv Mohabir grew up an outsider—both within his Central Florida community as a Guyanese Indian immigrant, and within his Westernized, Christian family as the only one intrigued by their heritage as Hindus and indentured laborers. Already looked upon doubtfully by his father and aunts, Rajiv knows that if they learned of his queerness, he might be outcast permanently. But Rajiv has learned resilience, and he embraces his identity as a poet and reclaims his status as an antiman—forging a new way of being entirely his own. Order Antiman here.
Find other new works by BIPOC writers here.
That’s it from me for now. I’ll be back in your inbox on April 26. Until then, be well, be safe, be love.
I just came home after my volunteer shift holding babies in the NICU at the hospital. I read two of your poems from Last Days during my break and I came home to read Starlight and Strategy before going to bed. I am so happy for you in meeting your goal to launch your book the way you envisioned, and I’m so glad your voice is out in our world. 💕