Still - by A Jamali Rad (Paperback)

About the Book

still is a book of poems about alienated interiority, a self-withdrawn, hidden presence: affective and extractive capitalism, surveillance and commodification of behaviour, non-participation, withdrawn complicity, paralysis in time of crisis, what non-doing does.

Book Synopsis

still is about alienated interiority. It begins with a body, with materiality that slowly morphs, extends, spills, and oozes non-linearity. A self-withdrawn, hidden presence: silent inactivity, affective and extractive capitalism, surveillance and commodification of behaviour, non-participation, withdrawn complicity, non-subjectivity and refusing a gaze, paralysis in time of crisis, what non-doing does. still proposes an alternative to action, a way to un-be or to cease, a way to be the wrench in the cogs of the machine, a way to jam the signal by refusing receptivity. This book disclaims language, writes without writing, divests in itself, is non-living for unlife. This book begins and ends in emptiness.

Review Quotes

"still is as uncompromising as it is calm, shows a truly remarkable balance of control over material (pun intended) and an insurgence the likes of which are seldom witnessed in Canadian literature."
--Khashayar Mohammadi, Plenitue Magazine

"After the revolution, shopping. Bonus: the drive for and failures of identity. Ennui's not right. We inhabit something more banal and more miserable than that. Is there enough of a subject even left to feel? still persists. It might prefer to be immobile, but it can't help seeking movement - toward light? or dissipation? - in spite of all the fight and thought it comes after. Anahita Jamali Rad is brilliant in their capture of this problem. Read it because you need to un/feel it with them."
--Larissa Lai

About the Author

Anahita Jamali Rad is a text-forward artist born in Iran and currently based in Tiohtià ke on the Traditional Territory of the Kanien'kehá ka. Informed by anti-imperialist materialist theory, Jamali Rad's work is founded on materiality, history, affect, ideology, violence, class, collectivity, desire, place, displacement, and silence. She published her first poetry book, for love and autonomy, in 2016.