What's left, Al-Mutanabbi Street
By: Mare Blocker, artist ; Katrina Roberts, poet
Contributors: Roberts, Katrina, poet; M. Kimberly Press; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: M. Kimberly Press
Published: 2013
Place of publication: McCall, Idaho
Language: eng
Subjects: Violence; Pictorial works; Booksellers and bookselling; Bombings; Iraq War, 2003-2011; Protest movements; Books and reading in art; Intellectual life; Social conditions; Censorship; Terrorism in art; In art; War and civilization; Vehicle bombs; Visual literature; Specimens; Artists' books; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Description: This collection supports and promotes awareness to the important mission and framework of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition's focus on the lasting power of the written word and the arts in support of the free expression of ideas, the preservation of shared cultural spaces, and the importance of responding to attacks, both overt and subtle, on artists, writers, and academics working under oppressive regimes or in zones of conflict, despite the destruction of that literary/cultural content.

"I am a storyteller. The book form has a rich legacy as a vessel for the sacred and the profane, both honored and destroyed throughout history. My love of text, image, ink, paper, cloth, thread has drawn me to this form. I honor the preciousness of the one of a kind and the democratization of the edition. I am enchanted with the relative ease of multiples, the ephemeral quality of printed matter and the potential for viewer participation and interaction with the storyteller that the touch of a book invites"--Mare Blocker's personal blog (viewed May 19, 2015).

"Katrina Roberts is the author of Underdog (University of Washington Press, 2011). She teaches at Whitman College, and lives in Walla Walla, Washington"--The Academy of American Poets website (viewed May 19, 2015).
Notes: Issued in a folded sheet of paper.

"The text was digitally printed on Magnani Incisioni, Folio, and Kitikata papers. The pages were then drawn on, using flares, fireworks and flames. Ogura Lace, handmade cattail, and papyrus papers were used to support the stitched repairs. Each of the pages was waxed, and stitched together using a linked blanket stitch binding."

"We began with the question, 'How do you repair the unrepairable?'"--Colophon.

On March 5th, 2007, a car bomb exploded on al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad. Al-Mutanabbi Street is located in a mixed Shia-Sunni area. More than 30 people were killed and more than 100 wounded. Al-Mutanabbi Street, the historic center of Baghdad bookselling, holds bookstores and outdoor bookstalls, cafes, stationery shops, and even tea and tobacco shops. It has been the longstanding heart and soul of the Baghdad literary and intellectual community for centuries. In response to the attack, a San Francisco poet and bookseller, Beau Beausoleil, rallied a community of international artists and writers to produce a collection of letterpress-printed broadsides (poster-like works on paper), artists' books (unique works of art in book form), and an anthology of writing, all focused on expressing solidarity with Iraqi booksellers, writers and readers. The coalition of contributing artists calls itself Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition.

Gift; Beau Beausoleil; 2019-2020.