Take notice

Meg Hamill's first book, Death Notices, has been released as part of Factory School's Heretical Texts series.

These poems take the form of obituaries mourning lives that have been lost in the current War in Iraq. Attempting to exclude no group from this public display of grief, alongside obituaries for Iraqi civilians and Iraqi Police, there are obituaries for American soldiers, suicide bombers, and contractors for Halliburton. The poems in DEATH NOTICES repeatedly strive to rise above blame and judgement, until the project becomes simply an effort to sustain our gaze long enough in order to feel all of these losses fully.

Influenced by Judith Butler's essay on "Violence, Mourning, Politics," (in which Butler argued: "There are no obituaries for the war casualties that the United States inflicts, and there cannot be.") Meg began writing obituaries for those who had died in Iraq, and in the process, she began exploring how the media covers their deaths.

I can't wait to get a copy.