from DESCENT

Lauren Russell

POETRY
Edition of 100

A selection from Descent, featuring a chalk erasure by the poet.

Descent is a book-length poetic hybrid work that is still in progress. The project began when the poet acquired a copy of the diary of her great-great-grandfather, a Confederate veteran who fathered twenty children by three of his former slaves, black women who have been silenced by history. Descent is at once an investigation, a reclamation, and an insistence on making history as a creative act.

DETAILS
October 2017
7.5 x 28”
4-panel foldout enclosed in a handmade envelope. Printed from metal type and magnesium plates on Hahnemühle Ingres paper.

Lauren Russell’s first full-length book, What’s Hanging on the Hush, is forthcoming from Ahsahta Press. Russell has received fellowships from Cave Canem, VIDA/The Home School, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is Assistant Director of the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics at the University of Pittsburgh.