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@openpoetrybooks.bsky.social

Please take the time to read this post from
The Sameer Projects's Mass Displacement Response Campaign & reach out w/ campaign suggestions to meet any of their goals (ie. the $51,950 rent goal; or $35,222 for electric supply). It's vital we support this effort. chuffed.org/project/1491...

The Sameer Project: Mass Displacement Response Campaign

We are witnessing a historically tragic, a historically cruel, a historically criminal, moment that is enabling the ETHNIC CLEANSING of Palestinians from the North of Gaza. It has been 77 year since the Nakba - the “catastrophe” - that led to the dismantling of Palestine, the dispossession of land, the theft of property, and the attempted fracture of the Palestinian identity by zionist forces. The images are similar, hoards of people forced to flee under threat, in duress, with no where to go. But today the reality is even more dire as airstrikes and quadcopter rain terror on a tired, starved, and depleted population. The North is being leveled, with one objective in mind - expanded occupation, total takeover. ETHNIC CLEANSING.

chuffed.org

September 16, 2025 at 6:47 PM

Reposted by Open Books: A Poem Emporium

Okka (Khairani Barokka; she/her/dia)

@mailbykite.bsky.social

V moving contributions from participants, thank you so much to everyone who donated/took part.

ANNAH, INFINITE comes out Sept 9 in the UK, Nov 19 in the US. If you pre-order via W4G @openpoetrybooks.bsky.social online bookshop, all proceeds are donated to charities benefitting Palestinians 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

September 4, 2025 at 11:56 AM

Reposted by Open Books: A Poem Emporium

ali alkhatib

@ali-alkhatib.com

If you can, *please* buy the books from @openpoetrybooks.bsky.social; through @workshops4gaza.bsky.social, we're raising money for The Sameer Project, a group founded by Palestinians around the world getting resources like food and baby formula to families in Gaza. they do incredible, critical work.

September 9, 2025 at 12:14 AM

Open Books: A Poem Emporium

@openpoetrybooks.bsky.social

Thank you so much to everyone who participated in our Sealey Challenge Poetry Pledge Fundraiser! It’s time to get those donations in to The Sameer Project ♥️ Turn your pledges into completed contributions here: open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com/products/sea...

Sealey Challenge Poetry Pledge Fundraiser

All funds collected through this page will be sent to The Sameer Project, a donations-based initiative led by Palestinians in the diaspora working to supply aid to displaced families in Gaza. AND REME...

open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com

September 1, 2025 at 9:43 PM

Reposted by Open Books: A Poem Emporium

Diana A

@dianalog.bsky.social

#SealeyChallenge 28/31

GHOST :: SEEDS by Sebastian Merrill🛶🌱

www.instagram.com/p/DN9lBNLkQd...

🙏🏻sponsor me (name: dianalogbooks) — docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... — or donate direct — open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com/products/sea... — to #FeedGaza w/ @openpoetrybooks.bsky.social

[book sits on blue velvet couch]

All text is in curving black on a pastel green river-rock-shaped space, slightly to the right & downward on the cover. The rock is surrounded by concentric bands of alternating pink & turquoise rippling outward to the edges (& becoming more rectangular as they travel outward).

[small print following the upper rounded edge of the rock:]
Winner of the X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize

[huge, centered & growing big then small then big then small to echo/fit the rock edges:]
GHOST ::
SEEDS

[medium size, in the lower left round corner of the rock:]
Sebastian Merrill

A circular silver seal in the upper right corner (with a black triangle, an open book inside, & a large pink dot over the left edge of the book & triangle corner) reads:
Stonewall Honor Book
American Library Association

August 30, 2025 at 2:24 AM

Reposted by Open Books: A Poem Emporium

Emma Morris

@curtainlecture.bsky.social

This and other books are available from @openpoetrybooks.bsky.social. All proceeds from the following titles go to The Sameer Project: open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com/collections/...

Image of the cover of "Heaven Looks Like Us: Palestinian Poetry" edited by George Abraham and Noor Hindi. The cover art is "Untitled," from "The Cleaning Collages" series by Jumana Manna. Shades of blue, white and gold are prominent.

August 30, 2025 at 7:13 PM

Reposted by Open Books: A Poem Emporium

bearofoses.bsky.social

@bearofoses.bsky.social

ta-daaaa! today i read the last book of poetry for this year's #sealeychallenge! RILKE'S BOOK OF HOUR HOURS, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy. @sealeychallenge.bsky.social @openpoetrybooks.bsky.social #poetry #booksky #catsky #catsandbooks

a brown tabby cat sits with his paws neatly tucked, a copy of RILKE'S BOOK OF HOURS in front of him.

August 31, 2025 at 7:14 PM

Reposted by Open Books: A Poem Emporium

bearofoses.bsky.social

@bearofoses.bsky.social

my #sealeychallenge stack. please show me your pile of poetry! @sealeychallenge.bsky.social @openpoetrybooks.bsky.social #booksky #poetry

a small wooden chair, upon which is a tall stack of books that i read for the sealey challenge this month.

August 31, 2025 at 7:28 PM

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Ice Floe Press (Open for Subs)

@icefloepress.bsky.social

For Day 30 amazing, evocative magic poems by Laurie Sheck. Body, history, self, infused w/by surroundings of innumerable experiential vision. Tomorrow I'll conclude this wondrous month w/poems by Adonis/late work. Please help R. raise funds for Gaza/Sameer Project via @openpoetrybooks.bsky.social TY

RobertFredeKenter @rfredekenter.bsky.social · Aug 31

For Day30 @sealeychallenge.bsky.social Laurie Sheck's poems shapeshift selves, where history, science & revisited myth & nature are reimagined as converging of sense/imagination. Visionary erudite longpoems & suites. A remarkable sensibility. @openpoetrybooks.bsky.social @lauriesheck.bsky.social .

Cover of Black Series poems by Laurie Sheck. A black cover with two wood/print flowers one umber the other beige on a rope like twisted stem. Published 2001, Knopf.

No Printout

Sundown, and the hills grow vague
as if giving a secret kindness to themselves
now that our human eyes can't scrutinize their properties
or pillage them for solace.
And it seems I am dissolving as I watch,
I who am nothing more than nothing now...
as the hard and cunning edges break apart, the sharp
currency of day eroding, finally governed by such softness,
my beggar-eyes scanning, looking for a channel that's not there.

I feel the turns and counter-turns of air,
a rustling as of cloth, voice-scrap, rave of wind.
There's the flick of a lit match, fitful webbings of headlights
up the road. A voice saying Buy one get one free.
Light pulses on and off in nearby windows
the way a meandering grief pauses at one place and then another
as if to sip from them awhile before it pushes further on,
no printout disfiguring its leaving.

Branches multiply in air, gather past the window.
In this, my printless feet, my eyes unambushed and unambushing,
my hands...Hills, the layered darks now take you.
Or have you become the ark that enwraps you, as once a girl
becomes a tree, her leaves swaying in that freedom,
her sudden facelessness her joy.

From The Mannequins

Backlit and leaning towards the street, the mannequins
look almost curious, as if wondering how it feels to be complicit
with the ebb and flow of light, how a face
can't discern itself; its territories shift and are shadowed,
a shore that wavers, its conduct ever conscripting,
raw and soft with trespass.

From Seaweeds

We didn't know what it meant to be so savagely self-sealed.

This is the relentless dream, this the admission ticket that can't be give back./As there are cardinal points that can't be change, machines that are/programmed/to do just one thing, and one thing only, as there are xeroxes of other xeroxes,
lighter or darker but basically the same,
as there are screens unaltered by the wishes that move through them,
and scenes that can't rescind their harsh configurations,

August 31, 2025 at 10:55 PM

Reposted by Open Books: A Poem Emporium

Diana A

@dianalog.bsky.social

#SealeyChallenge 31/31!

Salt the Water by Candice Iloh🌇🌃

www.instagram.com/p/DODPLSjDmK...

🙏🏻sponsor me (name: dianalogbooks) — docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... — or donate direct — open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com/products/sea... — to #FeedGaza w/ @openpoetrybooks.bsky.social

[library book sits on wood]

Cover art by Eben Nwaokpani shows a black person crouched on mossy rocks at the edge of a large body of water. Over them lean some pink tree leaves/flowers. In the distance, seemingly rising directly out of the water, is a half-ruined city skyline. A few puffy white clouds are in the turquoise & pink sky & in the foreground. Koi swim in the water close to the viewer. 6 pink butterflies flit around the head of the person & upward.

[in small black at the top edge:]
“Iloh is a writer to watch.” —Jason Reynolds

[in huge white, weaving behind & in front of some picture elements:]
SALT THE
WATER

[medium-size, in white, at the bottom, justified right:]
CANDICE ILOH
[small, italicized:]
National Book Award Finalist and Michael L Printz Honoree

September 1, 2025 at 7:11 AM

Reposted by Open Books: A Poem Emporium

Ice Floe Press (Open for Subs)

@icefloepress.bsky.social

Last of the 31 day Sealey Challenge for 2025. Also honored & humbled to help raise money for #Gaza people thru Open Book/Seattle partnership w/#SameerProject. You can continue to donate in Robert Frede Kenter name till Sept. 10th. Form at @openpoetrybooks.bsky.social. Ty to sponsors & blessings.

RobertFredeKenter @rfredekenter.bsky.social · Sep 1

Closing out 31 days reading 4 @sealeychallenge.bsky.social & participation in @openpoetrybooks.bsky.social drive w/ #sameerproject to raise money for Gazan people. A (2012) long poem by political/lyrical/visionary Paris-based seminal Syrian poet, Adonis (now 95). If you haven't read his work - do.🔥

Cover of Concerto al-Quds (Concerto for Jerusalem) by Adonis. trans. by Khaled Mattawa. Yale University Press (2017). Cover art by Adonis.
Cover is white with red rectangle at bottom, art is a drawing (untitled) by the poet, (an expressionist abstract map with writing).

from Heavenly Summary (opening poem)

Barefoot, knock on her door.
A prophet will open, and teach you how to march, and how to bow.

A stage play directed by the all-wise, the almighty.
And the Lord does this for the sake of all his children.

"Here I am, a silhouette of al-Quds,"
cried a three-headed dummy on the stage, then exited.

from AFFLICTIONS.
A. Questions
- Why is every atom of Palestine's ash an open wound? How does this wound/create life with the implements of death?
- Is Palestine's history an autumn that has migrated beyond the season?
- Why does the face of humanity wrinkle in the language of Arab leaders? And why is/this language clogged with trains that run only on dead-end tracks that never end? /And
why are those tracks built by leaders who wage battle on trees and water?

from Second Image

Along the road there is only gold that uproots the mind, or silver
that erects prison towers in air, light, and water.
Law is a slave to everything except itself. Lying is the master of the universe;
honor has no code.
And oh how horrid your suffering, dear Sincerity!

September 1, 2025 at 5:21 PM

Reposted by Open Books: A Poem Emporium

Diana A

@dianalog.bsky.social

#SealeyChallenge 22/31

So to Speak by Terrance Hayes 🎨✍🏾

www.instagram.com/p/DNuaGJJ3Es...

🙏🏻sponsor me (name: dianalogbooks) — docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... — or donate direct — open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com/products/sea... — to #FeedGaza w/ @openpoetrybooks.bsky.social

[book sits on blue velvet couch]

Cover art is Robed, by Terrance Hayes, unfinished 2020 painting based on photograph by Adrian Boot, Marvin Gaye last UK photo session at his West London Apartment 1980.
Gaye sits in a white robe on a gray couch; he’s leaning over his bare legs, holding his bare toes on the dark brown floor. His face is tilted upward so that he gazes toward the viewer.

[Large blue text across the top:]
TERRANCE HAYES
[tiny black text, justified left, next to Gaye’s head & just above the couch:]
Author of LIGHTHEAD,
Winner of the National Book Award

[just under the couch, to the right of Gaye’s left hand & foot & next to little orange, black & white Penguin icon, in tiny yellow:]
Penguin
Poets
[in large yellow, starting just under Gaye’s right foot, & justified right:]
SO TO SPEAK

August 24, 2025 at 4:59 AM

Reposted by Open Books: A Poem Emporium

Diana A

@dianalog.bsky.social

#SealeyChallenge 24/31

Helen of Troy, 1993 by Maria Zoccola⚡️🥚

www.instagram.com/p/DNy0Tr45L5...

🙏🏻sponsor me (name: dianalogbooks) — docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... — or donate direct — open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com/products/sea... — to #FeedGaza w/ @openpoetrybooks.bsky.social

[library book sits on blue velvet couch]

Cover art is a zoom in on the painting Helen of Troy by Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys (Walker Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool): Helen’s nose, eyes (gaze directed right & upward), furrowed brow, & red hair, severely parted. All text in white & centered.

[on her hair, just over the center part:]
POEMS

[just above her eyebrows, half behind her curly bangs:]
HELEN of TROY, 1993

Across the bridge of her nose:]
Maria Zoccola

August 25, 2025 at 10:08 PM

Reposted by Open Books: A Poem Emporium

RobertFredeKenter

@rfredekenter.bsky.social

Day 24 @sealeychallenge.bsky.social reading luminous prayersong of a book w/prismatic poems /new spirituals, anti-oppressive testament, political visions/family, self & struggle. A deeply resonant volume by brilliant Lucille Clifton @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social (1993) @openpoetrybooks.bsky.social

Luminous Painted cover The Book of Light by Lucille Clifton Copper Canyon (1993)

seeker of visions

what does this mean
to see walking men
wrapped in the color of death,
to hear from their tongues
such difficult syllables?
are they the spirits
of our hope
or the pale ghosts of our future?
who will believe the red road
will not run on forever?
who will believe
a tribe of ice might live
and we might not?

columbus day '91

Nothing is told us about Sisyphus in the underworld.
- Albert Camus

nothing about the moment
just after the ball fits itself
into the bottom of the hill
and the world is suspended
and i become king of this country
all imps and imposters watching
me,
waiting me, and i decide, i decide
whether or not i will allow
this myth to live. i slide
myself down. demons restoke the
fire.
i push my shoulder into the round
world and taste in my mouth
how sweet power is, the story
gods never tell.

june 20

i will be born in one week
to a frowned forehead of a woman
and a man whose fingers will itch
to enter me. she will crochet
a dress for me of silver
and he will carry me into it.
they will do for each other
all that they can
but it will not be enough.
none of us know that we will not
smile again for years,
that she will not live long.
in one week i will emerge face first
into their temporary joy.

August 25, 2025 at 10:43 PM

Reposted by Open Books: A Poem Emporium

ali alkhatib

@ali-alkhatib.com

if you'd like to buy the book, you should buy the book at @openpoetrybooks.bsky.social; books tagged with [W4G] (@workshops4gaza.bsky.social) raise money for Palestinians through The Sameer Project.

here's A Dying Colonialism

[W4G] Fanon, Frantz: A Dying Colonialism

Grove Press, paperback Translated by Haakon Chevalier Publisher Marketing: Frantz Fanon's seminal work on anticolonialism and the fifth year of the Algerian Revolution. Psychiatrist, humanist, revolut...

open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com

August 25, 2025 at 10:46 PM

Reposted by Open Books: A Poem Emporium

RobertFredeKenter

@rfredekenter.bsky.social

Now on Day 24 #SealeyChallenge of 31 a wonderful journey immersed in collections of #poetry contemporary, hybrid, experimental, & visual. Support my pledge $10 a book x 31 books @openpoetrybooks.bsky.social & in sponsoring me, raise needed funds for the People of Gaza, any amount $1, $10, $20 & up.

Open Books: A Poem Emporium @openpoetrybooks.bsky.social · Aug 2

Wow! We're up to 175 participants & more than $10k in pledges/direct contributions!

Let’s keep the momentum going ❤️‍🔥 You can still join the #sealeychallenge Poetry Pledge Fundraiser for Gaza, as a participant or sponsor, at any time. Details here: mailchi.mp/openpoetrybo...

August 25, 2025 at 11:00 PM

Reposted by Open Books: A Poem Emporium

RobertFredeKenter

@rfredekenter.bsky.social

Sponsor me any day for the next week or more at @openpoetrybooks.bsky.social Gaza Fundraiser Form for Sameer Project. Close to completing 31 days - one book a day, & I've personally pledged $10 per book x 31. Ty in advance blessings to everyone who visits my page & @icefloepress.bsky.social to read.

August 25, 2025 at 11:10 PM

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Sarah Dowling

@sarahmdowling1.bsky.social

Sealey Challenge, days 23-25! Juan Gelman, trans Ilan Stavans; Juliana Spahr; Dolores Dorantes, trans Robin Myers. From University of New Mexico Press, Wesleyan & Wave.

I’m reading these to raise $ for Gaza via @openpoetrybooks.bsky.social

open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com/products/sea...

Hand holding Otrarse by Juan Gelman, translated by Ilan Stavans

A hand holding Copy by Dolores Dorantes, translated by Robin Myers

August 26, 2025 at 12:02 AM

Reposted by Open Books: A Poem Emporium

bearofoses.bsky.social

@bearofoses.bsky.social

today i read Be Holding by Ross Gay for the #sealeychallenge @sealeychallenge.bsky.social @openpoetrybooks.bsky.social #poetry #booksky

upittpress.org/books/978082...

Be Holding - University of Pittsburgh Press

upittpress.org

August 26, 2025 at 1:46 AM

Reposted by Open Books: A Poem Emporium

Diana A

@dianalog.bsky.social

#SealeyChallenge 25/31

Looking and Seeing by Truong Tran 🎯

www.instagram.com/p/DNz1zTe3Hh...

🙏🏻sponsor me (name: dianalogbooks) — docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... — or donate direct — open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com/products/sea... — to #FeedGaza w/ @openpoetrybooks.bsky.social

August 26, 2025 at 7:38 AM

Reposted by Open Books: A Poem Emporium

bearofoses.bsky.social

@bearofoses.bsky.social

today i read 3 chapbooks by M. Stone: Everything Passes Away, Three Shadorma Poems, and BAUBLES for the #sealeychallenge @sealeychallenge.bsky.social @openpoetrybooks.bsky.social #poetry #catsky #caturday

a brown tabbly cat is napping in a cozy brown chair. 1 small and 2 tiny chapbooks of poetry by M. Stone are propped up in front of him: Everything Passes Away, Three Shadorma Poems, and BAUBLES.

August 23, 2025 at 8:24 PM

Reposted by Open Books: A Poem Emporium

bearofoses.bsky.social

@bearofoses.bsky.social

yesterday was chaotic. i started WILLIAM BRONK SELECTED POEMS but only just finished reading it. so this is yesterday's book. wolfie has some thoughts. #sealychallenge #poetry #booksky #catsky #catsandbooks @sealeychallenge.bsky.social @openpoetrybooks.bsky.social

a brown tabby cat in a cozy chair with a squirrel stuffy beside him ponders the book in front of him, Selected Poems of William Bronk.

August 20, 2025 at 7:55 PM

Reposted by Open Books: A Poem Emporium

bearofoses.bsky.social

@bearofoses.bsky.social

today i read the poetry in HAIKU MASTER BUSON, edited by Yuki Sawa and Edith M Shiffert for the #sealeychallenge @sealeychallenge.bsky.social @openpoetrybooks.bsky.social #poetry #pigeon #pigeonsky 🪶

a white and black pigeon perched on the back of a chair with a copy of a book of buson haiku in the foreground

a copy of a book of buson's haiku with a blurry white and black pigeon in the background

August 21, 2025 at 1:05 AM

Reposted by Open Books: A Poem Emporium

RobertFredeKenter

@rfredekenter.bsky.social

Today @sealeychallenge.bsky.social Day20 Im exploring visual poetry. I chose Lost Sonnets by the late Catherine Vidler @timglaseteditions.bsky.social (2018) & @guillemotpress.bsky.social collaboration/conversation Lens Flare by @derekbeaulieu.bsky.social & Rhys Farrell. @openpoetrybooks.bsky.social

Purple swirling abstract wave-shapes form the cover of Lens Flare by Derek Beaulieu & Rhys Farrell (2021) from experimental Guillemot Press.

Farrell reconfigured Beaulieu's 2009 Aperture project from Penteract Press, where the poet experimented with pre-computer era dry-transfer lettering, which tends to decay, crack and deconstruct over time. Farrell's brilliance is a call-response poet-to-poet digital reimagining of the already deconstructing earlier technology's transformations, adding brilliant layers of bright pop neon hues to create provocative visual tone poems with arresting movement and visionary dreamscape movement.

Rectangular cover of Catherine Vidler's Lost Sonnets. Stark, minimalist pale blue lines with arrows in diagonal patterns close together like a weave, arrows moving to the right bottom. (2018) Timglaset Press.

Vidler used the Paint program connected to Microsoft Word; in particular, the insert shapes function. I love these pieces with their wide variety of both simple and more complex iteration. As above, the overall technique was to cut and paste endless variations of black and white, blue, and black/red geometric shapes of different type, in effect using 'found' materials "to start" yet manipulating and altering the shapes with the rotate tool, a both precise and intuitive compositional process. She also used other tools such as Microsoft "callout" to envision 'wordless' yet potent modern sonnet hallucinations that are visual representations of the compact expressive 'essay' of the sonnet form still favored by text-based poets, Sonnets today are created in both traditional and elaborated individual new designs. As I make both text based and visual works, I deeply appreciate the hybridity of the experimental artists who work either in purely visual or visual/text formats, and through exploration and expansion of their text based production, see visual works/ or hybrid/ as the significant poetic/art practices they are, simple, diverse, complex.

August 21, 2025 at 10:10 PM

Reposted by Open Books: A Poem Emporium

Sarah Dowling

@sarahmdowling1.bsky.social

Today in my #SealeyChallenge for the Sameer Project: a Nicole Brossard selected, «Temps réel du poème,» from Le Castor Astral. Focused on work from the 80s/90s & a previously unpublished poem from 2022😍
Donate via @openpoetrybooks.bsky.social
open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com/products/sea...

A hand holding the book open to a poem, «Shadow: soft et soif.» feet, tiles, chairs in the background

August 22, 2025 at 12:54 AM

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