Ongoing Resuscitation

In November 2016, Other Rooms transitioned to Open Resistance—9 online issues of protest poetry by 28 poets in reaction to the election of an openly racist, sexist, xenophobic demagogue as President of the United States—published weekly up until the inauguration in January 2017.

 

We had plans at the time to follow up with an anthology, readings and more issues of OR online, continuing to build the community of poets that Open Resistance had brought together. However, for various personal reasons, we were unable to complete that mission, and OR has been in a state of suspension for the past eight years.

 

We feel once again compelled to continue what we had started when this tragedy began. In 2016 we were stunned, and the action we took was reactionary. This time we want to be proactive: in addition to publishing directly political poetry of resistance, we also plan to continue providing a forum for experimental, imaginative and playful poetry of all sorts. We still believe that poetry can make a difference, and we believe that writing and publishing poetry that enacts and promotes ways of thinking and feeling that are outside of the mainstream are in themselves important and revolutionary acts.

 

We also want to reiterate our pledge from a statement published on Other Rooms on November 11, 2016:

 

In the face of this direct existential threat to our community, we want to make it explicitly clear that from this moment until there is no more need to do so, ORP is dedicated to using all of our knowledge and skills in the linguistic arts to defend the rights of those now threatened by the current president . . . and everything he represents.

                                           [link to full original statement]

 

ORP

Michael Whalen & Ed Go, Editors

February 1, 2025