Introductory Statement

In an ongoing poetics project initiated in August 2016 via Harriet (The Poetry Foundation’s blog for poetry and related news), I am inviting poets and artists to participate in a collaborative creative-critical arts practice by attending to the Call & Response Performance Ensemble’s prompt to conduct Experiments in Joy (announced at Antioch College in 2014 and featured in Obsidian’s fall 2015 special issue). Black artists and their allies are invited to share reflections and artworks towards shared joy and our collaborative creation of the worlds we inhabit—and the worlds that inhabit us.

—Duriel E. Harris, Editor