Rooms Within Rooms: Peripheries 7 Explores the Architecture of Poetry and Art

Peripheries is a journal of word, image, and sound that crosses thresholds between genres, senses, languages, and traditions. This seventh edition explores poetry—and art—as a habitable space, a room of sorts. After all, “stanza” comes from the Italian for room, and the Arabic for the poetic line is the same as for house (bayt). So, this year’s issue includes work about privacy, containment, exile, alienation, and home. It also features six curated folios—room-like containers—each with its own interiority, atmosphere, and architecture.

The first two folios are explicitly about rooms: Amanda Gunn explores the spaces poets and poems occupy, both physically and conceptually. Gabby Woo and Yonyu Chen solicited artwork for their folio, but before it went to print, it took up residence in their shared room, allowing the space—its light, dust, and humidity—to leave its trace on the art. Other folios traverse nonfiction poetry, experimental musical arrangements (with audio), new translations of Yiddish poetry, and a tribute to the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Harvard Square.

Alongside these themed folios, the edition includes an in-house collection of poetry, fiction, and visual art, as well as craft talks by acclaimed poets Tracy K. Smith and Donald Revell, along with the winning entries from the journal’s inaugural poetry competition. Contributions feature celebrated voices (such as Andrea Cohen, Shangyang Fang, Isaac Jarnot, Sawako Nakayasu, Carl Philips, among others) and emerging writers from our community and beyond.

Peripheries is both a publication and a growing creative community. The journal crosses its own threshold into real-world events housed at the Center for the Study of World Religions—readings, craft talks, workshops, and collaborations. And with each issue, Peripheries expands its vision of what a journal can hold.