On Tuesday, 4 February 2025, I was honored to take part in the first public reading of Winter in America (Again. This anthology, published by Carbonation Press and edited by Katie Sarah Zale, Paul E Nelson, Roxie Power, alia abdulla-matta, Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Robert Lashley, CChristy White, and Theresa Whitehill, is a response to the results of the November 2024 USAmerican presidential election. It was inspired, in large part, by Katie Sarah Zale’s work on Sam Hamill, who orchestrated a similar anthology in 2003 in response to the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq. I’d like to express my gratitude to the editors and publisher for their incredible effort to get the book into the world by the day of the inauguration, but even more so for the opportunity to participate in important dialogue confronting the reality of the current administration.

For many, the flurry of administrative orders geared at tearing down the diversity and individuality of this country has come as no surprise. Nor the acquiescence of, and even direct and furtive support of the “broligarchy.” A fellow poet and Cascadian (a North Cascadian, or Canadian), Matt Law, called the goings on of USAmerican politics right now a “techno-coup,” which I find to be quite the accurate nomenclature. These individuals are not engaged in the work of building up communities, but in replacing all they come across with manifestations of their egos.

Participating in this reading was, for me, a powerful way to engage in community that is willing to, with humility, speak up against the injustices that are swarming like locusts right now. Stacey Jones, professor of economics at Seattle U, pointed out during the reading that many online census sites containing important information about the diversity of the population had been taken down. This type of attack on information infrastructure is just one small example.

I feel strongly that life is a process of building the world you want to live in, and participating in this reading, hosted by CPL at Seattle U, was a step toward the world I want to be a part of constructing. I might also say life is a process of building a soul I want to live with, and this reading had a similar effect on my soul. They might even be the same thing. Suffice to say a book like this one, which builds community between incarcerated poets, impoverished poets, well renowned poets, and all between is an essential step toward the world many of us want to see. As Tetsuzen Jason Wirth alluded to in his opening for the reading, when times look bleak it is all the more important to focus on our practice, on how we want to live. Don’t save it for later.

I hope when folks watch this video they will be inspired to continue to build a world out of love and community (of humans and beyond), as we are all part of this bigger organism called the Earth. The extractive and abusive attitudes and behaviors of this AI-fueled god-complex in figures like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Kash Patel, Donald Trump, and more will lead us down a road where the soul of the world is diminished in service of individual egos, which are as fragile as frozen glass. When they shatter, the small steps folks have taken toward understanding, kindness, and community, like this reading, will blossom forth like seeds in the Spring.