DEADLINE APRIL 1. This special feature of West Branch will highlight poetry engaged with the concept of slow violence. The world we inhabit is marked daily by disaster–climate change, oil spills, famine, war–but there are limits to human attention. Rob Nixon defines slow violence as violence that is easily ignored because it is occurring gradually, over time, and often out of sight. Under the extractive conditions of capitalism, what wrought violences have become invisible to us in the comfort of our homes? In what ways has time eroded or camouflaged certain kinds of decay or destruction, and how might poetry as a mode of excavation or diagnosis?
We seek poetry that reckons with the quiet, hidden, and insidious accruals of violence, whether on a large scale or a more intimate, personal level. We welcome work that complicates, deepens, challenges, and experiments with slow violence–any and all engagements are of interest.
Email submissions of 3-6 poems as a .pdf or .docx to Sarah Ghazal Ali at sga003@bucknell.edu with a brief cover letter and third-person bio.
West Branch is a thrice annual magazine of poetry, fiction, essays, and reviews published by the Stadler Center at Bucknell University.