Issue 4.2: IT IS WHAT IT IS offers a sustained meditation on the aesthetic potential and political utility of concreteness and affirmation. Against a stance of passive acceptance – it is what it is, and we cannot change it – the work in this issue turns the phrase into an active political provocation: we name the conditions of possibility that we want to see in the world and, in so doing, speak them into being.

Featuring new poetry and prose by Dani Carter, Ashton Diduck, River Halen, Henry Heavyshield, Irum, Woojae Kim, Alice Notley, Gerry Shikatani, and Yoon Sook Cha; a feature conversation between Alice Notley and Deanna Fong on the energetic and healing effects of poetry; a collaborative artist project by Benjamin de Boer, SK Maston, and Ami Xherro exploring presence and trace; a conversation between Fred Wah and Jastej Luddu on multicultural discourse and archival recordings; a conversation between Susan Blight and Stó:lō scholar and musicologist Dylan Robinson on the politics of naming within the wider context of Indigenous resurgence; a futurist vision of land and relation by Diné artist Nicole Neidhardt; and an image folio of artworks by Derya Akay, Jonathan Alfaro, Marvin Luvualu António, Tiziana La Melia, Elizabeth McIntosh, and Tania Willard showcasing variations on mark-making as a playful meditation on “artists, writing.”

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