Philip Metres

Book cover for ‘Dispatches from the Land of Erasure: Essays and Conversations’ by Philip Metres, published in the Poets on Poetry Series edited by Derek Pollard. The cover features an abstract geometric composition of overlapping rectangular blocks in various colors including blues, reds, greens, yellows, purples, and browns against a light gray background. The blocks appear layered and fragmented, creating a mosaic-like pattern that suggests themes of fragmentation and reconstruction. The title and author name are displayed in clean, dark typography at the top of the cover.

How do you teach Palestinian and Israeli literature without pretending the power is equal?

@philipmetres.bsky.social proposes “contrapuntal reading,” and DISPATCHES shows it in practice: what it reveals about both texts, as well as what the stakes are.

press.umich.edu/Books/D/Disp...

#Books

NEW: Epstein survivors release the most powerful PSA I have ever seen.

Make this go viral so every member of the House of Representatives sees it.

PSA Reading Series: Gregory Pardlo & Philip Metres Placing poetry at the crossroads of American life since 1910.

Coming to Brooklyn November 20th @poetrysociety.org !!! poetrysociety.org/events/psa-r...

A life characterized by verse: How one Cleveland poet found himself through writing – The Land When Cleveland poet Philip Metres was a senior in AP English at Wilmette, Illinois’ Loyola Academy in 1987, he was assigned a poem that would change the course of his life.

Good to see @philipmetres.bsky.social featured in The Land:
thelandcle.org/stories/a-li...

Dispatches from the Land of Erasure Drawn from a decade of writing and conversations by Arab American poet and writer Philip Metres, Dispatches from the Land of Erasure redefines the writer’s role as a catalyst for justice and a resiste...

It’s another deeply engaging addition to the Poets on Poetry Series, @philipmetres.bsky.social – and a great companion to your latest, DISPATCHES FROM THE LAND OF ERASURE:

press.umich.edu/Books/D/Disp...

Book cover for ‘Your Historical Loveliness Knows No Bounds’ by Wendy Xu. The book is part of the Poets on Poetry Series, published by the University of Michigan Press and edited by Derek Pollard. The cover image is a striking, full frame close-up photograph of a bronze sculpture of a man's head, angled to fill most of the page. The sculpture is highly dramatic: the man's face is contorted with intense emotion, and his mouth is wide open, as if shouting or screaming. The metal has a dark, mottled verdigris patina. All text is positioned across the lower third of the cover. The title, ‘YOUR HISTORICAL LOVELINESS KNOWS NO BOUNDS,’ and the author's name, WENDY XU, m are printed in light gray/off-white text. The subtitle, "FORM, FUTURITY, AND DOCUMENTARY DESIRE," is centered beneath the title and printed in a distinctive pale yellow text.

When does a poem become more than art?

Frontline workers writing pandemic haiku. Layli Long Soldier rewriting congressional resolutions.

YOUR HISTORICAL LOVELINESS asks what happens when poetry stops being about witness and becomes action itself.

press.umich.edu/Books/Y/Your...

Looks fantastic!

A life characterized by verse: How one Cleveland poet found himself through writing – The Land When Cleveland poet Philip Metres was a senior in AP English at Wilmette, Illinois’ Loyola Academy in 1987, he was assigned a poem that would change the course of his life.

"Always the same story: two people, one tree, not enough land or light or love." —Philip Metres @philipmetres.bsky.social
thelandcle.org/stories/a-li...

Book cover for ‘The Imaginary Present: Essays in Quantum Poetics’ by Amy Catanzano, published in the Poets on Poetry Series by the University of Michigan Press. The cover features a pixelated, glitch-art style background in shades of pink, purple, rose, and teal. The title and author name appear in bright pink text on white rectangular l blocks that seem to float over the abstract digital pattern. The subtitle appears in white text on a rose-colored banner.

Physicists at CERN told Amy Catanzano they can use quantum theory but find it "counterintuitive.” She recognized immediately: quantum logic IS poetic logic.

THE IMAGINARY PRESENT explores how poetry can reshape scientific understanding.

@uofmpress.bsky.social

press.umich.edu/Books/T/The-...

Book cover for ‘Dispatches from the Land of Erasure: Essays and Conversations’ by Philip Metres. The cover features an abstract geometric composition of overlapping rectangular blocks in various colors including blues, reds, greens, yellows, purples, and browns against a light gray background. The blocks appear layered and fragmented, creating a mosaic-like pattern that suggests themes of fragmentation and reconstruction. The title and author name are displayed in clean, dark typography at the top of the cover.

Can you document trauma without exploiting it?

@utopiaminus.bsky.social warns that the “representation of violence can produce its own kind of violence.”

In @philipmetres.bsky.social’s DISPATCHES, poets debate what documentary poetry can and can’t do for justice – and whether writing is enough.

Learn more about @philipmetres.bsky.social’s book and order your copy here:

press.umich.edu/Books/D/Disp...

Book cover for ‘Dispatches from the Land of Erasure: Essays and Conversations’ by Philip Metres. The cover features an abstract geometric composition of overlapping rectangular blocks in various colors including blues, reds, greens, yellows, purples, and browns against a light gray background. The blocks appear layered and fragmented, creating a mosaic-like pattern that suggests themes of fragmentation and reconstruction. The title and author name are displayed in clean, dark typography at the top of the cover.

When Israeli forces captured Jaffa in 1948, the municipal archives vanished, erasing Palestinians' legal proof of land ownership.

@philipmetres.bsky.social's DISPATCHES FROM THE LAND OF ERASURE shows how Arab poets have sought to preserve this disappeared history.

press.umich.edu/Books/D/Disp...

“Sitting close to the center, not very high in the branches, / I heard it hitting the high leaves, and I was happy, // watching it happen without it happening to me.” —Marie Howe, “The Copper Beech” www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48561/...

Book cover for ‘Dispatches from the Land of Erasure: Essays and Conversations’ by Philip Metres. The cover features an abstract geometric composition of overlapping rectangular blocks in various colors including blues, reds, greens, yellows, purples, and browns against a light gray background. The blocks appear layered and fragmented, creating a mosaic-like pattern that suggests themes of fragmentation and reconstruction. The title and author name are displayed in clean, dark typography at the top of the cover.

When poets debate whether metaphor itself perpetuates harm, every image becomes an ethical choice.

@philipmetres.bsky.social's DISPATCHES FROM THE LAND OF ERASURE captures these heated conversations, changing how we approach poems that engage cultural difference.

press.umich.edu/Books/D/Disp...

Grateful for this work and the work of the work

Nobody who voted to confirm RFK is fit to hold public office

Host: There are new calls this morning for RFK Jr.'s resignation, and those calls coming from inside HHS itself. More than 1,000 current and former HHS workers are making this demand in a letter released this morning. They say his leadership has "put the health of all Americans at risk"

Concerned that we are losing the necessary ratio. 15% of teachers/faculty should be irretrievably strange eccentrics. Every learning experience should have some element where in later life you can reflect with former classmates about how bizarre at least one (1) class per year was.

Old Soviet joke for today:

A man walks into a newsstand every day, looks around, and leaves.

After a long time of this, the owner says “Can I help you find something?”

“I’m looking for the obituaries.”

“The obituaries are in the back of the newspaper, comrade.”

“Not the one I’m looking for.”

The NRA buys off Congress. No action on guns.

The oil industry buys off Congress. No action on climate.

Insurance companies buy off Congress. No action on health care.

The list goes on and on.

Money in politics is the root of our dysfunction.

Starbucks’ CEO made 6,666x more than the company's median employee in 2024.

This was the widest CEO-to-Worker pay gap in the entire S&P 500.

Remember this before you order your next pumpkin spice latte.

How the Oslo Accords Fragmented Palestine and Uprooted a People “Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories.”  –Amílcar Cabral, Tell No Lies, Claim No Easy Victories * From the foundationa…

On settler colonialism, the illusion of progress, and what actually resulted from the Oslo Accords.

The Paddystinians of Belfast: On the Palestinian Solidarity Movement in Northern Ireland I couldn’t believe my eyes: not one, but bunches of Palestinian flags kept appearing, every time we turned onto another Belfast street—waving at me, beckoning, inviting me into their story. It was …

“When I first arrived in Belfast, I saw both Palestinian and Israeli flags, but in different neighborhoods—the Palestinian ones in Irish nationalist areas, and Israeli ones in Protestant loyalist areas.” @philipmetres.bsky.social on Northern Irish solidarity with Palestine.

"Only when the last tree has been cut, the last river has been poisoned & the last fish been caught will they realize that they can't eat money" old Cree proverb

In a small town in County Cork, Ireland, a monument stands in appreciation to the American Choctaw Indian Tribe.
Although impoverished, shortly after being forced to walk the Trail of Tears, the tribe somehow gathered $170 to send to Ireland for famine relief in 1847 [Historic Vids]

Oscars: Jordan Submits Cherien Dabis’ ‘All That’s Left Of You’ For 2026 Best International Feature Film Category Oscars: Jordan Submits Cherien Dabis’ ‘All That’s Left Of You’ For 2026 Best International Feature Film Category

Find this film. Watch this film. It’s as great a scripted film as you will see this decade. It shows at Telluride this weekend. Seek it out. Like NoOther Land, the doc which won an Oscar last year, the distribution in the US will be impeded. Fight that. Support it.

deadline.com/2025/08/osca...

Texas is a majority-minority state, yet Republicans drew maps that make white votes carry 2-3 times more political power than Black or Hispanic votes.

That’s what gerrymandering does: it cracks and packs communities of color so their growing numbers translate into less representation.

By @mosabbluesky.bsky.social:

"This boy is Abdullah Abu Zarqa(5...)... Abdullah was a cancer patient who missed his treatment... because of #Israel ’s inhumane siege.
A few days he was evacuated.
Today he passed away in a hospital in Turkey.
It was too late for him."
www.threads.com/@mosab_abuto...

Three hours ago, an Israeli quadcopter dropped a grenade on a group of people in Shujaeeya neighborhood in Gaza City.
It killed a woman named Yousra Abu al-Kass.

Note: Yousra lost her husband and two children in previous air strikes.