Conjuring Community

Welcome.

Barahm Press is honored to present “Conjuring Community,” our inaugural digital folio, in which 11 poets offer powerful interpretations of protection spells. They respond to the state of the world with a clear-eyed awareness of suffering, both personal and global, but then transform deprivation and pain into spaces of rich possibility. Oladejo Abdullah Feranmi writes in “The Waking,” the astonishing poem that opens the folio: “Silence harvesting our throats/to find the voice box empty./But there is light in our mouth./The tunnels in our bones are still empty/but the river in the veins is flushing with hope./Every tomorrow is dressed in newness.” He shifts silence and emptiness into adjacent light and hope. 

In “Rosaries,” Ishle Yi Park sings a song of grief, prayer and remembrance in the face of the terrible and ongoing genocide in Palestine: “I sing a song/I say my prayers/I remember their faces/& beautiful Palestinian names.” Her poem, like a rosary, seeks to create change in the world via simple but potent language, and we are reminded that to sing, from -cantare, is at the root of incantation and poetry. Naming, too, is a kind of a magic, a declaration of being, and in her litany, the speaker connects herself and the reader to the tapestry of lives woven in the poem. 

We also see the powerful intent behind naming in féi hernandez’s “On June 2024 Usú Buys a 3 Year Storage Space For Her Future Grandchildren at a Fertility Center Because Her Trans Daughter is Undergoing a Medical Transition, is Mentally Unstable, and Can’t Afford to Preserve Her Will To Experience Motherhood Someday, Somehow.” The crossout of “SPERM” and repetition of “GENETIC MATERIAL” is an essential act of the trans daughter, and addressing her future children is a spell that wills them into a kind of existence.

In Shradha Shah’s “Redwood Spell,” this sense of life’s interconnectedness extends to nature. The speaker gently asserts, “I do not wish to feel all that you feel/I am no/expert on your canopy/or cones but I know this:/You are a momentum of many/not a solitary thing./And when I lean my back into you,/asking if I feel your pulse, wondering/if I feel your heat, I am asking/if I feel my own.” Rather than having a hierarchical relationship that assumes all-encompassing human understanding and singular existence, the speaker acknowledges not-knowing and a non-solitary way of being. The interbeing of speaker and tree implicitly argues that the greater-than-human natural world must be included within any circle of protection we cast.

Part of Barahm’s mission is fostering collaboration between poets and artists to see what beautifully complex “third space” emerges, and we asked Palestinian artist Manar Harb to create a visual response to the collection. Her ekphrastic painting intertwines evocations of water, light, trees, the sky, and the human body, poignantly capturing the collective spirit of these poems. Co-editor and art director Julie Kim, in turn, has thoughtfully woven Manar's artwork throughout the folio. Many of the poems engage with the page as a visual field or otherwise incorporate visual aspects into the work, so viewing the folio on desktop view is recommended. 

We are deeply grateful for your taking the time to read, observe and listen to “Conjuring Communities”—each poem is accompanied by an audio recording by the author.  When we allow ourselves to be moved by creative work, to stretch beyond the everyday boundaries and sense of self, we cultivate the empathy which lies at the heart of community as well as the imagination to create new realities. We hope our inaugural folio creates community, offers protection, and inspires you to thoughtful action.