Joy Watford
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joywatford.bsky.social
Joy Watford
@joywatford.bsky.social
76 followers 72 following 67 posts
Founder and creator of portraits and stories at Those We Lost, an online memorial to the victims of the drug war in the Philippines: www.thosewelost.org

Writer of essays on life, culture, books and art

Tech and travel editor

Book editor and designer
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joywatford.bsky.social
'In memory of them, in memory of their inedible beauty, today is International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. In other words, for the elimination of violence by the little Trujillos that rule in so many homes.'

—Eduardo Galeano, 'Children of the Days'
November 25 INTERNATIONAL D AY FOR THE ELIMINATION OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN In the jungle of the Upper Paraná, the prettiest butterflies survive by exhibiting themselves. They display their black wings enlivened by red or yellow spots, and they flit from flower to flower without the least worry. After thousands upon thousands of years, their enemies have learned that these butterflies are poisonous. Spiders, wasps, lizards, flies and bats admire them from a prudent distance. On this day in 1960 three activists against the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic were beaten and thrown off a cliff. They were the Mirabal sisters. They were the prettiest, and they were called Las Mariposas, “The Butterflies.” In memory of them, in memory of their inedible beauty, today is International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. In other words, for the elimination of violence by the little Trujillos that rule in so many homes.
November 25, 2025 at 7:44 AM
joywatford.bsky.social
There are 30,000 humanitarian reasons for Rodrigo Duterte to stay in prison.
October 7, 2025 at 10:19 AM
joywatford.bsky.social
'I Am from There' by Mahmoud Darwish. 77 years on, the Nakba continues.
Mahmoud Darwish's poem: I Am from There I am from there and I have memories. Like any other Man I was born. I have a mother, A house with several windows, friends and brothers. I have a prison cell’s cold window, a wave Snatched by seagulls, my own view, an extra blade Of grass, a moon at word’s end, a life-supply Of birds, and an olive tree that cannot die. I walked and crossed the land before the crossing Of swords made a banquet-table of a body. I come from there, and I return the sky To its mother when it cries for her, and cry For a cloud on its return To recognise me. I have learned All words befitting of blood’s court to break The rule; I have learned all the words to take The lexicon apart for one noun’s sake, The compound I must make: Homeland.
May 15, 2025 at 4:25 PM
joywatford.bsky.social
Stationary? STATIONARY?

Really, Esquire? You don’t employ copy editors now?
Screenshot of an article title from Esquire.com, stating ‘Esquire’s 25 Favorite Stationary Items of 2025’
May 2, 2025 at 5:03 AM
joywatford.bsky.social
Drawing for the sake of drawing. I missed doing this.
April 28, 2025 at 1:44 PM
joywatford.bsky.social
You know you're getting old when you manage to capture the right skin tone for a test portrait but immediately forget which colours you mixed. 😔
April 26, 2025 at 1:06 PM
joywatford.bsky.social
Imagine the audacity to remove references to Kanafani on their platforms whilst stealing the contents of his books for AI training.
Screenshot of the results from The Atlantic's LibGen search tool, confirming that Ghassan Kanafani's books are among those that Meta stole to train its AI
April 14, 2025 at 1:12 PM
joywatford.bsky.social
Revisiting old Those We Lost portraits and reposting them as videos while I’m working on new ones. Impossible to document all 30,000 lives lost, but it’s important to remember that each life mattered and each death tore a hole in the fabric of our collective humanity.
#Duterte
#PhilippineDrugWar
March 22, 2025 at 7:43 AM
joywatford.bsky.social
Why yes, my current poetry reads follow a specific theme.

#BookSky
#poetry
Part of a bookshelf with the following poetry books on it: Nox by Anne Carson, Ghost of by Diana Khoi Nguyen, Toxicon and Arachne and Death Styles by Joyelle McSweeney, Ruby for Grief by Michael Burkard, Grief's Alphabet by Carrie Etter and The Man with Night Sweats by Thom Gunn
February 9, 2025 at 11:06 AM
joywatford.bsky.social
I'm starting to read Szentkuthy's 'Marginalia on Casanova' and finding myself baffled by parts of the introduction from Zéno Bianu. 'Rigorous bulimia of a thousand burgeoning stories' is a bit much for me. 😩

#BookSky
Screenshot of highlighted text from the introduction to Míklos Szentkuthy's Marginalia on Casanova, which reads: 'As archivist buffoon, Szentkuthy feeds the extravagant theater with his rigorous bulimia of a thousand networks of burgeoning stories, palimpsests in abysses and apocryphal pitfalls. Appropriating countless masks, pacing the epochs, this emotional athlete has no other aim than to break time until it stills the whirlwind of history into one continuous present.'
January 26, 2025 at 4:16 PM
joywatford.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 13

#BookSky
#Books
#BookChallenge
#20daybookchallenge
Cover of Alan Lightman's novel Einstein's Dreams
January 26, 2025 at 4:06 PM
joywatford.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 12

#BookSky
#Books
#BookChallenge
#20daybookchallenge
Cover of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing
January 23, 2025 at 9:52 PM
joywatford.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 11

#BookSky
#Books
#BookChallenge
#20daybookchallenge
Cover of Gabriel García Márquez's Love in the Time of Cholera
January 22, 2025 at 9:19 PM
joywatford.bsky.social
My consolation this Wednesday after a tough work and life day

#annecarson
#lrbwinterlecture
#booksky
Screenshot of placeholder for the livestream of Anne Carson's LRB Winter Lecture in London on 22 January 2025.
January 22, 2025 at 5:36 PM
joywatford.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 10

#BookSky
#Books
#BookChallenge
#20daybookchallenge
January 21, 2025 at 6:39 PM
joywatford.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 9

#BookSky
#Books
#BookChallenge
#20daybookchallenge
Cover of the Penguin Modern Classics edition of James Baldwin's novel Giovanni's Room
January 15, 2025 at 5:05 PM
joywatford.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 8

#BookSky
#Books
#BookChallenge
#20daybookchallenge
Cover of the 2014 edition of bell hooks' Feminist Theory
January 14, 2025 at 2:49 PM
joywatford.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 7

#BookSky #Books #BookChallenge #20daybookchallenge
Cover of the first UK edition of Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being
January 13, 2025 at 9:45 AM
joywatford.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 6

#BookSky #Books #BookChallenge #20daybookchallenge
Cover of Ilya Kaminsky's Deaf Republic
January 12, 2025 at 9:14 AM
joywatford.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 5

#BookSky #Books #BookChallenge #20daybookchallenge
Cover of Eduardo Galeano's Book of Embraces
January 11, 2025 at 8:30 AM
joywatford.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 4

#BookSky #Books #BookChallenge #20daybookchallenge
Cover of Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red
January 10, 2025 at 8:43 AM
joywatford.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 3

#BookSky #Books #BookChallenge #20daybookchallenge
Cover of Banana Yoshimoto's book 'Kitchen'
January 9, 2025 at 6:22 AM
joywatford.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 2

#BookSky #Books #BookChallenge #20daybookchallenge
Cover of the UK edition of Percival Everett's novel The Trees
January 8, 2025 at 7:52 AM
joywatford.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Day 1

#BookSky #Books #BookChallenge #20daybookchallenge
The cover of a recent edition of Octavia Butler's novel 'Kindred'
January 7, 2025 at 9:13 AM
joywatford.bsky.social
@arielthefroth.bsky.social Reading your post about Catullus made me look at some of my Greek poetry books. Have you read Anakreon's poems yet? I thought you might like this Guy Davenport translation of a couple of fragments.
December 21, 2024 at 3:12 PM