Poetic Terrorism

Poetic Terrorism is a series of poetry and art pamphlets produced between 2004 and 2010 by zinester Joseph Delgado, created as supplement to briefly titled local art zine Polvo, as well as template for acts of 'poetic terrorism'.

Origin

Poetic Terrorism was developed and inspired by Hakim Bey's section on "Poetic Terrorism" as taken from his longer body of work TAZ. It should be noted that Poetic Terrorism pamphlets took a stance against Hakim Bey and some of his more notorious essays which are completely rejected by this pamphlet series. Poetic Terrorism pamphlets were designed to alarm, confound, and disturb an unsuspecting public with poetry and art, to essentially disrupt and engage them in physical scenarios and settings in order to achieve the goal of making this "collaborative community" think beyond the normalized routinizations of our daily lives.

Distribution

The pamphlets were primarily distributed with key intentions of focusing on rural communities, communities along Route 66 (both pre-1937 and realignment segments of the highway). Areas of distribution were Mohave Valley, AZ; Needles, CA; Laughlin, NV; Las Vegas, NV; Barstow, CA; Oatman, AZ; Kingman, AZ; Lake Havasu City, AZ; Seligman, AZ; Phoenix, AZ; Yuma, AZ.

Intention

Poetic Terrorism is a kind of performative act of rejecting a social stigma of obedience and moral righteousness that seems to be ever so vigilant in rural communities; for every bar there is church, and sometimes we can confuse the two... Poetic Terrorism is simply a thread of art production taken brazenly from the text of Hakim Bey and in a way reforming that single idea and remorphing it for an audience that may not have a conscious awareness of zines, art, and poetry.

Poetic Terrorism is now out of print, variants may be produced in the future... but its primary mission has been absorbed by the new zine Polvo.