Part 5: "We are a peaceful people-yet we're not a fragile people"
Coalesce:
1. to grow together or into one body:
The two lakes coalesced into one.
Synonyms: join, combine, unite
2. to unite so as to form one mass, community, etc.:
The various groups coalesced into a crowd.
Synonyms: merge, blend, fuse, amalgamate, join, combine, unite
3. to blend or come together:
Their ideas coalesced into one theory.
When poets are brought together and inspired by the same text, artwork, or natural phenomenon, it’s not surprising that their respective works become a continuous conversation; a coalescence of connection. Through the poems, Speech for When Free Nations Unite (an erasure) and The War Racket audiences take in two unique perspectives that commingle not simply through shared text, but through the movements and themes that have been plucked through to the surface by the writers. These pieces share a foundation of reclamation, a call to action in uniting against empire, and a truth telling hidden within propagandized words. Let’s explore Speech for When Free Nations Unite (an erasure) more deeply:
1. How does the movement of this erasure add to its argument? What work is the white-space doing for the poem? Write your own poem with special attention to white-space, to silence, and use it to strengthen the piece.
2. What are Free Nations in 2025? What are Free Nations 70 years after this speech is released? Write a poem from the perspective of someone who has only known a free nation.
3. Write a response from a nation within the [resistance] coalition that details their just demands.
4. Strong verbs are used throughout this piece. Craft your own piece using strong, direct actions. Try balancing the actions against their consequences. How does the balancing lend to the piece?
5. Write your own speech. Incorporate one or more emergent themes from this poem to tie them together.
6. Fill in the liminal spaces within this poem to write-back into the erasure; un-erase. How does the context of this new hybrid poem change with these additions? Give credit in an epigraph.
7. What is peace? What is the greatest threat to this peace? Write as the embodiment of peace. How does Peace protect itself? How does it move within its reality?
Below, you can submit your poem to be displayed in our upcoming blog featuring works in conversation with this anthology.
by K’Ehleyr McNulty