FUSION!

The new FUSION is here! It’s a multimedia collaboration between Batswana poets and artists and Prairie Schooner that features new poems as well as selections from the magazine’s archive curated by Managing Editor Marianne Kunkel and Batswana poet TJ Dema.

The poetry and art are focused on the theme of “Womb.” As Kunkel writes, this project takes as its subject a controversial part of the female body, at a political moment when the conversation about female embodiment is less a conversation and more an “oppressive cultural silence.”

This collection of striking poems seeks to break this silence through creative exploration of the many facets, complexities and associations our culture has with the womb. Among the collection’s highlights:
Kyoko Uchida on turning 30, Joshua Thatayaone Machao on being “a man without a womb,” Linda Hogan on the “Señora of Hysteria” and Andreattah Chuma on the children of Haiti.

Introductory essays by Kunkel and Dema bookend the collection, while stunning artworks by Sedireng Olehile Mothibatsela and Kelly Manning provide visual perspectives on the project’s themes.