At the bookseller's market

This collection supports and promotes awareness to the important mission and framework of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition's focus on the lasting power of the written word and the arts in support of the free expression of ideas, the preservation of shared cultural spaces, and the importance of responding to attacks, both overt and subtle, on artists, writers, and academics working under oppressive regimes or in zones of conflict, despite the destruction of that literary/cultural content. "This artbook came about as I was writing my book of multi-voiced poems concerning the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Every seed of the pomegranate. During my research into the al-Mutanabbi Street bombing the images of the desecrated bookseller's stalls, piles of burnt books, and women and men wailing or sorrowing over dead bodies transfixed me. I wrote a poem in response, and then envisioned it between the burnt wings of my book struggling to fly. But why create such writings and objects? At Cabrillo Community College where I teach, Iraqi vets have begun to more readily identify themselves, and have started - often with trepidation about how others might frame their experiences - to talk and write about what they've come through. In my literature, composition, and screenwriting classes, the stories I hear are shocking or mundane or funny, but certainly different from what makes the news. As a result, I began to educate myself - about the U.S. military, Iraqi history and literature, and nearby Arab cultures - and poems started to appear. I'd written six when the Iraq veteran Brian Turner came to read from Here, bullet and phantom noise at Bookshop Santa Cruz. Afterwards, the poet Ken Weisner and I went out with him for drinks, and I told him what was happening in my writing, and how uncertain I was: I'd never been to Iraq, didn't know Arabic, and had no experience in the military. Brian said: 'This war is being ignored by almost everyone. And the repercussions will be dealt with for years. If citizens don't educate themselves and take an interest they do a great disservice to the vets. Write if you're called to write.' At the time of this writing, the war is officially over, with almost 5,000 U.S. soldiers having been killed, and over 30,000 seriously injured. Though the statistics about Iraqis are less reliable, the estimates suggest over 10,000 Iraqi soldiers, and over 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died. Forty percent of Iraqi professionals have left since 2003. The infrastructure is only slowly being repaired, and though the country is no longer dominated by a ruthless dictator, the sectarian violence and divisive politics show no signs of ending. And even as U.S. military boots leave the ground, what the soldiers bring home affects those around them in innumerable ways: drug and alcohol abuse, psychological trauma, and suicide are part of the legacy of war; yet the camaraderie, knowledge of other cultures and languages, and deeper sense of what we're all capable of (both good and bad) return as well. I created this poem and artbook to help myself see beyond the simplistic labels of PTSD and jihadism, xenophobia and patriotism, and to imagine looking through others' eyes. 'At the bookseller's market, ' with facing Arabic translation by Sattar Al-Lami and Ilham Rahal, is displayed within the charred and wing-like pages of this book, but it will only fly if other's compassion give it wings"--The Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website. David Sullivan's first book, Strong-Armed Angels, was published by Hummingbird Press, and two of its poems were read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac. His second book, Every Seed of the Pomegranate, is a multi-voiced series of poems about the war in Iraq, from Tebot Bach. He teaches at Cabrillo College, where he edits the Porter Gulch Review.