Landscapes of Dissent: Guerrilla Poetry & Public Space
This timely book pushes poetry more firmly into public space at a vibrant historical moment when both the public potential of poetry & the possibilities of public space are being refigured. In Landscapes of Dissent, Boykoff and Sand engage a crucial shift in the relationship of poetry & public space: they do not merely insert poetry into an existing public sphere imagined as a platform, but rather that show us how both poetry & public space take on alternative forms of publicness. These acts of publicness join other creative reclamations to assert politics in a space the neoliberalism frames as seamless & accessible--& therefore post-political. Landscapes of Dissent is expansive & sharp--an important book of political-aesthetic scholarship.--Jeff Derksen --Jeff DerksenLandscapes of Dissent is a prolegomenon toward a new topoiesis--the creation of a new topos, a new place. This book brings forth not only the discussion of several practices of disensual use of consensual ("public") space, but also gives away ideas & insights about what takes place thanks to a poetry that makes space in a polis made diapolis. Reading this book I found myself feeling an unknown political emotion that prompts my passive reader to become a reader ready to engage (again) the streets--energized by this discussion in which writing is hope & hope is action. Make it public! --Heriberto Yepez --Heriberto Yepez