piyyut – Solomon Nagler

piyyut is a long-form poem assembling fables from the Jewish Diaspora in an attempt to unsettle refugee migration stories while exhuming mystical, prophetic voices in post-Holocaust Europe. Verses are titled and informed by the aleph-bet and examine the entanglements of the diasporic experience through allegorical tales and critical Jewish settler confessionals. Each verse is paired with a drawing by visual artist Angela Henderson exploring the intersections between graphic notation and lyrical, poetic form. Combining and juxtaposing digitally- and hand-rendered elements, the hybridized landscapes both respond to and reflect the complex, speculative and sometimes brutalist journey through past and present.