Pots and Other Living Beings is a literally and visually compelling
first poetry collection by upcoming Indigenous artist annie ross. The
text combines socially conscious poems with geographically grounded
photographs, each describing an aspect of living in the postmodern,
neoliberal age. All compositions emphasize in evocative ways our times'
disillusions and disenchantments, promised and failed utopias, material
and cultural ruins, alienations and dispossessions. The work stems from
the poet's gathering of thousands of photographs and field notes during
a research trip to the Southwestern United States, exploring the
founding, making, dreaming, and proliferation of nuclear weapons since
the 1940s. The poems in Pots and Other Living Beings hint at and
reflect upon the food, arts, schools, hospitals, family farms, and
alternate existences peoples could have enjoyed if our resources,
imagination, time, and energy had been directed towards l i f e, in all
of its forms.