Imagined Archive: Anthropological poetry at SAPIENS Magazine

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS JOURNALS

PRESS RELEASE
Contact: Chip Colwell
editor@sapiens.org

New York, NY – SAPIENS magazine is excited to share news of its 2024 poet-in-residence: Alma Simba. Through this position, Alma will use poetry to experiment with the idea of an imagined archive to explore the ways in which histories of Black African women are often rendered invisible.

“I am looking forward to the SAPIENS residency to explore this idea of a constructed archive,” Alma says. “SAPIENS’ anthropological focus and its unique approach to problematizing scholarly assumptions of the filed will allow me to engage with this notion of official narratives and the complexity of heritage and identity that is often ignored.”

Alma is a poet, historian, and writer based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. She is interested in the power of words in capturing the complexity of the human experience. At the same time, her work is also interested in moments where words are insufficient, particularly in instances of trauma, grief, and systemic erasure. Alma has an M.A. in history from the University of Dar es Salaam. Her areas of interest include histories of marginalized identities, heritage, memory, and Oral Traditions. Alma was a 2022 Sensitive Provenances Research Fellow at the University of Göttingen, where she engaged with ancestral human remains from Tanzania. The collection lacks sufficient biographic evidence—a source of ongoing trauma and difficulty for Tanzanians.

“I am moved by this idea of using poetry as an imaginative tool to fill the gaps where African women are overlooked completely. Poetry allows us to creatively visualize the past in a way that goes beyond statistics and dates,” Alma says. “Through this language, history can take a more human dimension—where the archive is not just dead ends and shadows but a chance to dream and creatively re-construct.”

She believes that through poetry and invention, people can go beyond the trauma of state-sanctioned colonial violence and envisage the possibility of healing and, perhaps, justice.

Alma is honored to be the next digital resident at SAPIENS. “Without this residency, I would not be able to explore in such a structured and supported way this idea of an imagined archive that I have been meditating on for years,” Alma relates. “I am excited about the poetic development I will receive during the residency and the practical insights from the SAPIENS team. The magazine is a one-of-a-kind platform that aligns with my approach of engaging with academic issues in nonacademic language. With this, I hope to engage a more global dimension to the SAPIENS audience and bring unseen histories to the forefront.”

This will be the fourth year of the program. SAPIENS’ outgoing poet-in-residence, Toiba Naseema, contributed an in-depth introduction about Indian-occupied Kashmir and three original poems with accompanying audio recordings and photos. Toiba also was a co-editor for a curated collection titled Poems of Witness and Possibility: Inside Zones of Conflict that began rolling out on January 29 of this year.

At the end of her residency, Toiba expressed that “SAPIENS is a great platform for exploring the lives of humans. I had a great time during the residency and learned a lot from the SAPIENS team. I really appreciate their inclusivity.” She added, “I believe during such hard times, SAPIENS sees the world through humanitarian eyes. Through the residency platform, I was able to represent my place, Kashmir, to the rest of the world via anthropological poetry. I believe occupation will come to an end when people connect and show solidarity via platforms like SAPIENS. I thank the team for bestowing on me this position, and I hope the magazine will sustain its motive of awakening the world toward justice.”

In 2022, Jason Vasser-Elong served as the poet-in-resident, contributing six original poems with accompanying audio recordings. Jason also served as a co-editor for the Indigenizing What It Means to Be Human project, a collection of 19 poems and stories. A Q&A with him can be found on SAPIENS’ website: “Rhyme & Reason: Poetry as a Cultural and Communal Bridge.”

SAPIENS’ inaugural poet-in-residence in 2020–2021 was Justin D. Wright (as of 2023, Día Joy Wright) a doctoral student in sociocultural anthropology at American University. During their tenure, Justin contributed original autoethnographic poems. They also served as a co-editor of the Lead Me to Life: Voices of the African Diaspora collection and a co-author of the article “What Is Anthropological Poetry?”

Anthropological poems bring readers insights, emotions, aspirations, and interventions from skilled observers of the human and nonhuman worlds to reflect on “what it means to be vitally human and to make sense of the human experience.”

CONTACT:
Christine Weeber, Poetry Editor

SAPIENS Magazine
editor@sapiens.org