Beau Beausoleil is a poet and activist (Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here)

based in San Francisco, California. He is the author of 15 chapbooks of

poetry. His most recent titles are: The Killing of George Floyd

(Intermittent Press, 2023), Poems for Ukraine (Barley Books (UK, 2023),

War News I, published as a free eBook by Agitate! Journal in 2023, and

War News II: (12/9/2023 to 6/3/2024, published as a chapbook by fmsbw press.

 

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I began writing these War News poems on October 8th, 2023.  I wrote a poem each day, in reaction to the on-going genocidal war on civilians in Gaza.

The poems are both a way to register my solidarity with the Palestinian people, as well as a way to measure the temperature and debris of this war, in my daily life.  These poems are a visceral and personal reaction to what I was reading and seeing in the media, each day.

 

All the poems carry the same title: War News; and, the first 100 poems, covering the first three months of killing, were published by Agitate! Journal in December 2023, as a free, online ebook.  This chapbook holds the poems written between December 9th, 2023 and June 3rd, 2024.  After June 3rd, I could no longer sustain the intensity of writing a poem each day about the continuing genocide in Gaza.

I continue to write about Gaza, but those poems are not part of this series.

 

About these poems, I feel they are, at times, both useless and necessary.