In Revolutionary Letters, Diane di Prima commands us: “rewrite the calendar.” In 2020, confined to our La-Z Boys in a collage of disease (economic disaster–racial injustice–claustrophobic deterioration–lack of oxygen), the need to REWRITE became a poetic and political imperative for poet Conley Lowrance and artist Sarah Monks. Artificial Respiration combines the domestic convention of the wall calendar and the Surrealist tradition of collage poetics into a collaborative artists’ book that includes twelve months plus calendrical coda. Poet and artist craft scenes of piled-up bills, warm beers, scruffed rats, lounging elites, lines of schoolkids, smiling grandmothers with oxygen tanks, antique war imagery, and body bags supervised by police.

This was printed in an edition of 77 copies, saddle-stitched in colored staples and signed by the poet and artist. In a lavender glassine envelope, with rubber-stamped cover and calendar insert designed by M.C. Kinniburgh. Use the book as a calendar for 2021 to reflect on where we’ve come in 2020 and the work yet to be done. 

Artificial Respiration is published in December 2020 by TKS and may be purchased through Granary Books.

May you make it to your New Moons.