Dear Apogee fam,
We hope you’ve been continuing to build and nurture networks of support since last we talked. Certainly, things across the United States have kept accelerating—the machinations of power, white supremacy, anti-Blackness and ableism continue to weave themselves together, now as always. Yet at the same time, the past few months have seen acts of resistance and community care proliferating in the face of this violence—protests, phone zaps, bail bonds, crowdfunding, free food initiatives, and more. We talked about these tensions in the open letter we published on June 1, but they’re worth reiterating nonetheless.
We’re writing to announce a new initiative for Apogee Journal: a series of broadsides from past contributors, and the reappearance of a tote bag, as well. This series, conceived in May 2020, debuts with broadsides by Kemi Alabi, Jasmine Reid, and Lisbeth White—in addition to a tote featuring artwork by Apogee cover artist E. Jane. As we promised back in June, this is one (physical) iteration of Apogee’s goal of centering and uplifting Black artists, insisting on space for a wide and urgent range of work through intentionally crafted objects. Throughout Kemi, Jasmine, and Lisbeth’s work, we see powerful arguments for joy, archival resuscitation, experimentation, and more; we’re so excited to see these into the world.
This initiative is also intended as a corrective to the wave of unpaid institutional expropriations of Black artists’ work over the past several months. 60% of the total proceeds of each of these broadsides will go the writer in question. The remaining 40% of proceeds go to a community fund or organization of the writer’s choice. (At the request of E. Jane, 100% of their proceeds will go to a community organization.) We partnered with Black-owned or co-owned printing studios, namely Radix Media in Brooklyn for the broadsides and The Grease Diner in Oakland for the totes, to further support these communities of artists. More information about this initiative, including the causes these broadsides and totes benefit, is available on our shop.
As we put together this initiative, it was important to us that Apogee not directly benefit financially off these writers’ work through this series. We’d love for you to buy a broadside or tote from us—but we’d especially love this because it helps the writers and artists we’re featuring, and the shops that printed them as well.
A broadside of Jasmine Reid’s poem “Chromosome Death in a Blood Garden.”
A broadside of Lisbeth White’s poem “Myth, Seminal.”
A broadside of Kemi Alabi’s poem, “Catatonia Mercy, or, what I learned from Mother”
A tote bag featuring artwork by E. Jane
We’ve been working on this for the past several months, and are so excited to issue these beautiful broadsides and totes into the world. You can click over to our shop to purchase all the products available—but regardless, thank you all for your support and presence thus far. We, as always, are so grateful to be with you.
In love and solidarity,
Apogee Journal
