AustLit

'OMAR SAKR AND GEORGE ABRAHAM were set to meet for the first time in Boston, April 2020, to read and celebrate their books, to talk shit, and eat great food. There were couches that would have been uncomfortably slept on, night skies that would have rested on their shoulders, ahweh that would have been shared, lyric moments that, being poets, they would have awkwardly remarked on; they would have shared stories not weighted for Twitter or WhatsApp, stories that demanded physical presence. They would have become closer. Instead, pandemic and panic. Instead, the crushing weight of countries coming to terms with mortality at scale, the imperial West shaken within its complacent, deadly stupor. There are those who say now is not the time for art or for artists. These are people for whom art has always been an accessory rather than a necessity, an aesthetic rather than a purpose. For those of us who have always been only a step away from destruction, who come from oppressed communities, we arrive at art with the intent to use it to survive, to force a reckoning, and to help our kinfolk do the same. And so, it really wasn’t a stretch for us to continue to talk, to write to each other, to become closer, word by word, as we have done here.' (Introduction)