Mutanabbi rising

This collection supports and promotes awareness to the important mission and framework of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition's focus on the lasting power of the written word and the arts in support of the free expression of ideas, the preservation of shared cultural spaces, and the importance of responding to attacks, both overt and subtle, on artists, writers, and academics working under oppressive regimes or in zones of conflict, despite the destruction of that literary/cultural content.

"We chose to focus on the everyday, the things we reach for, the things in markets, the things that make for culture at its most basic. John brought words (cardamom, u sukar) from the 'Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here' broadside he had printed with poet Zaid Shlah; Paula brought words and the memory of cones of spices she saw in the markets of Algiers. In structure, too, the book is based in simplicity, for it begins flat yet rises into a solid triangle: Stability"--The Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.