coastlines review

welcome to the inaugural issue of coastlines review, a journal of documentary poetics. central to this issue is the larger question of what constitutes docupoetry, and throughout these 38 pieces, i’ve attempted to curate one possible definition of what documentary poetry is: a shared anxiety about what the document can and cannot do.

issue one opens with examples of the archive as an instrument of violence. colonial deeds erase by naming, prisons reform by erasing, and institutions convert human cost into procedure. from there, the reader journeys through bodies that have become their own archives, through scientific texts dissected and reimagined, through intimate remains of loss, and through photographs that require reconstruction just to hold the people in them. the authors interrogate the news, measure the tides, recount carceral transport, extract from documents in an attempt to indict them, and fragment what convention demands be whole. they ask what it means to document and bring to light what official records refuse to acknowledge: survivors, poisoned water, the uncountable noun.

arriving at the end, we reach what the entire issue has been circling: through itemized lists and timeline markers, official acronyms and mechanical repetitions, grainy scans and aged photos, and non-linear text and footnotes, these works demonstrate that the most honest forms of witness are often the ones that refuse to be efficient about it.

natalye childress