As a poet and typographer, Emet Ezell works with the materiality of language. For Ezell, words and letters are not empty husks of signification; rather, they are charged with historical residue and mystical energy. Ezell conceptualizes their artistic practice as a form of haunting: language is a medium to animate death. In this talk, they will speak about their work and research in Sabile, Latvia, and Lublin, Poland— two sites of ethnic cleansing and Jewish dispossession. What emerges from the festering wound of annihilation? Amidst the weaponization of memory, how do we engage the past without getting stuck?

Emet Ezell is a poet and typographer living in Berlin, Germany. Their work spans themes of devotion, dispossession, ruin, and return. They are the author of the chapbook Between Every Bird, Our Bones (Newfound) and the guidebook to Liberation Tarot (PM Press). Ezell is winner of the 2021 Gloria E. Anzaldúa Poetry Prize and a 2024 Literature Stipend from the Berlin Senate.