Note: This roundtable was conducted on a shared document between the participants, beginning on June 1st and ending August 31st, 2011. Tisa Bryant, Duriel Harris, and Mathias Svalina were also counted among the initial participants, but they could not find time—as the summer grew busier—to contribute. Nonetheless, I thank them for their emails, their encouragement, and their solidarity. I'm grateful to Evie, Farid, Juliana, Veronica, Francisco, J. Michael, Orlando, Amy, Timothy, and Jaswinder for their conversation here, now public. I'm honored to curate a space for this engagement; I hope more dialogues, conversations, and poems result because of it. And I thank Claudia Rankine, whose initial encouragement was a continued catalyst as the conversation unfolded. The cover photograph was taken by me last May 2011, in Dubrovnik, Croatia.

—JMW (Labor Day 2011)


Partipant Bios: Francisco Aragón | Jaswinder Bolina | Veronica Golos |
Amy King | J. Michael Martinez | Farid Matuk | Evie Shockley | Juliana Spahr |
Orlando White | Timothy Yu