&: experiments in collaborative composition
Granted, ‘with’ is a we thang, a twoness that undermines the authorial, authoritarian and untrustworthy ‘I’. ‘With’ says communal and connected (along the lines of E.M. Forster’s “only connect”). ‘With’ implies a body that’s intertwined with multiple others (think of Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intersectionality, that parallel tracks of say, race, class and gender converge at these embodied junctions). Moreover, suppose the ‘with’ signals an umbilical link to a trauma, that’s not only personal but communal. LA’s fires (Palisades and Altadena) in January 2025 collapsed history, colonization, indigeneity, urban sprawl, modernity and (fill in the blanks) into several hurts or blows dealt to the city as a Jello-like construct that’s vulnerable, insecure and evolving. ‘With’, as a force, hands the mic of articulation to those many living forces that collude, conspire, party, with fire. It’s not pretty. It’s a disaster for some. If we are schooled by fire, then what are fire’s poetics of instruction about the planet and our place on, in, of and with it? These extracts are from an unpublished, book-length work, in progressive (re)vision, provisionally titled, L.A. Warming.
Fred D’Aguiar’s poetry, fiction and nonfiction amount to fourteen books. Essays and some plays (for stage and radio) are scattered to the four winds. Born in London in 1960 of Guyanese parents and raised in Guyana and the UK, he has lived in the US since the ’90s. He teaches Literature and Creative Writing at UCLA.