"Shaping Destiny: Editors' Notes" banner: mural of Jerusalem viewed through a hole in the wall

Richard Cambridge, Jacqueline Johnson, Pamela Uschuk, Michael McDermott

Editors’ Note: Prose

Daily we are bombarded by campaign ads for the coming Presidential election on the internet, TV and radio against a backdrop of great social unrest—the Israeli War in Gaza, the Ukraine War, extreme weather events caused by the Climate Crisis, Equity, poverty and homelessness, a teetering health care system, gun control, a biased Supreme Court and many other imperative issues upon which the American public is divided. Emotions flood onto screens across the globe. It was interesting for us to read work by writers addressing these various important issues at the same time the Presidential campaign rages between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. About Place’s election theme continues to take on a greater and greater gravitas. This election is a crucial election for the fate of humanity, for all beings, and for the fate of the planet. The results of this election will define what we are as a country now. It will define the shape of democracy. Michael McDermott, Director of Black Earth Institute, crafted the idea for this issue of About Place. His aim in “Shaping Destiny: Election Season, Before, During and After” was to collect work that would reflect art before, during, and after the election. By extension Michael sought to answer this core question: “No matter what the election results, how does art serve spirit, the earth, and social justice?”

Richard Cambridge, Jacqueline Johnson and Pamela Uschuk read prose submissions for “Shaping Destiny.” Richard and Jacqueline did the lion’s share of reading. It was a pleasure for all of us to work with these fine thinkers and writers. Our editorial discussions were always fair-minded, candid and respectful. Constantly building on its reputation, About Place received a wealth of strong prose submissions. We are proud of the pieces we accepted, including a thought-provoking interview by Alexis Lathem with Palestinian activist Wafic Faour, an essential essay dealing with white supremism in America by Allen M. Price, an essay by Cynthia Hogue, “Meditation on the Power of Poetry in an Election Season,” a section of memoir and essays curated by Ann Fisher-Wirth written by students in Parchman, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, Richard Hoffman’s astute essay, “Around and About a Villanelle,” as well as a beautifully written lyric essay by Mackenzie Sanders, “The Deer of Kaibab,” which Jacqueline rightly noted “directly deals with the price of industrial waste and pollution and its impact on all who come in contact with it. It is told in the voice of a sick, possibly dying, native person and is from a First Nations perspective.”

All these compelling prose pieces answer a resounding “YES” to Michael’s question, proving that art is very much alive and serving spirit, the earth, and social justice.

Gratitude goes to Jacqueline Johnson and Richard Cambridge along with Pamela Uschuk and Michael McDermott for their steadfast devotion to reading and commenting on the prose. Many thanks to Ann Fisher-Wirth and Jacqueline Johnson for reading and selecting poetry. We are grateful to Kate Sutter and Elizabeth Coleman for their work doing preliminary reading as well as other work on this issue. Special thanks to Jesse Hughes for shepherding all of us through this technological publishing process.

Richard Cambridge, Jacqueline Johnson, Pamela Uschuk, Senior Fellows
Michael McDermott, Director
Black Earth Institute

Richard Cambridge’s work has appeared in The Paterson Literary Review, Nantucket Journal, Asheville Poetry Review, and other publications. He is the author of a collection of poetry, PULSA—A Book of Books (Hanover Press), spoken word CDs One Shot News—Poetry of Conscience (Earthshine) and The Cigarette Papers—A Memoir of Addiction (Fern Hill), from which he developed a one-person play that opened at The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. His awards include The Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize, a finalist for the Fine Arts Work Center, and the Cambridge Peace and Justice Award. He is the Review Editor for Solstice Literary Magazine online. He is a Senior Fellow at the Black Earth Institute, and edited About Place, the institute’s online journal, A Civil Rights Retrospective: 1963-2013. From 1995 to 2020, he curated the Poets’ Theatre at the legendary Club Passim in Cambridge, MA, and Arts at the Armory in Somerville, MA. As the lyricist, he is collaborating with Swiss musician singer-songwriter George Hennig. Their first album, Songs from the Crossing (Swan’s), was released in March 2022.

@richard.cambridge
https://www.richardcambridge.org/

Jacqueline Johnson is a multi-disciplined artist creating in poetry, fiction writing and fiber arts. She is the author of A Woman’s Season, on Main Street Rag Press, and A Gathering of Mother Tongues, published by White Pine Press, and is the winner of the Third Annual White Pine Press Poetry Award. Her work has appeared in This Is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets, Dear Yusef, Essays, Letters, and Poems for and About One Mr. Komunyakaa, Baby Suggs and A Purple Butterfly, and Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era, Routledge 2020. She is a Cave Canem fellow and Black Earth Institute Senior Fellow. Works in progress include Golden Lady, a poetry manuscript, The Privilege of Memory, a novel, and How to Stop a Hurricane, a collection of short stories. She is a graduate of New York University and the City University of New York. A native of Philadelphia, PA., she resides in Brooklyn, New York.

@awomansseason
https://www.jacquelinejohnsonarts.com/

Pamela Uschuk has eight books of poems, including Crazy Love, winner of a 2010 American Book Award and a new collection, Refugee, from Red Hen Press, 2022 (Starred Kirkus Review, Finalist for the Arizona Book Award, one of Orion Magazine’s best 14 books of poems in 2023). Translated into more than a dozen languages, her work appears worldwide, including Poetry, Ploughshares, Agni Review, etc. Her awards include a Women Writers Retreat Fellowship at Storyknife in Homer, Alaska, Best of the Web, the Struga International Poetry Prize (for a theme poem), Dorothy Daniels Writing Award from the National League of American PEN Women, and prizes from Ascent and Amnesty International. Editor-In-Chief of Cutthroat, A Journal of the Arts, and Black Earth Institute board member and Senior Fellow, Uschuk lives in Bayfield, Colorado and Tucson, Arizona. She is working on a new manuscript of poems, Pulling Down Sky, as well as a multi-genre memoir called Hope’s Crazed Angels: An Odyssey Through the Whispering Disease.

http://www.pamelauschuk.com/

Michael McDermott is a retired physician who spent many years in Emergency Medicine, becoming the Director of Adult Emergency Medicine at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. He was co-author on 20+ papers on improving asthma care. He retired to take a home in rural Dane County, Wisconsin, on 20 acres with an increasing portion as restored prairie. He has been a life-long activist, taking leadership positions in organizations. He met Patricia Monaghan in early 2004 and, faced with Bush’s second election, they formed the concept of the Black Earth Institute as a think tank for artists who take art in relation to spirit, earth and social justice. They launched the first group of fellows of BEI the next year. Michael’s land is named Brigit Rest after the Irish saint and goddess. Patricia died in 2012 but before that developed many projects built to promote Celtic spirituality. Michael continues as director of the Institute and is managing editor of About Place Journal.

Other works by Jacqueline Johnson »

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