EXTENDED MAY DAY 2014

Greetings DEAR READERS: 

Back in 2011, many of us here in Oakland experienced the most active sense of political possibility in our lives. But here it is, 2014, and a lot hasn't changed. If we're "lucky" we have a job, and work too hard and too long. Or our labor is precarious, ready at any point to land us in the reserve army of the unemployed, if we're not already there.

If work (and its future predicate, debt) are still the air we breathe, we at the PLP are asking ourselves what examining our labor might mean for resistance. We were provoked by this quote from Kathi Weeks in her book The Problem With Work:

How might we expose the fundamental structures and dominant values of work--including its temporalities, socialities, hierarchies, and subjectivities--as pressing political phenomena? If why we work, where we work, with whom we work, what we do at work, and how long we work are social arrangements and hence properly political decisions, how might more of this territory be reclaimed as viable terrains of debate and struggle? The problem with work is not just that it monopolizes so much time and energy, but that it also dominates the social and political imaginaries.

We all "do two jobs" (or more) - that is, struggle to support ourselves and our families / communities, and to make writing, to be writers. So what does the terrain of this daily experience feel and look like? What can we learn from it?

So here's to your belated May Day, the day capital loves to mock. 

So here's to checking back in with you, with a  

SPECIAL COLLECTION OF WRITING FROM CHILE

translated and curated by poet Carlos Soto-Roman; including work from 

Roberto Contreras, Juan Carlos Urtaza, Daniela Acosta, Juan Pablo Pereira, 

Jaime Pinos, Pablo Langlois, and Pablo Soto-Roman.

In addition, this season's offerings include a great  

EXTENDED MAY DAY COLLECTION  

featuring contributions from the following writers: Paul Ebenkamp, Jeanine Webb, 

Katy Bohinc, Cheena Marie Lo, Ted Rees, Sandra Simonds, Brittany Billmeyer-Finn, 

Jess Heaney, Catherine Theis, Trish Spotts, and Red Tees.

A PDF of the Issue can be viewed and downloaded here

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We are the luckiest editors extant, to solicit and then receive such relevant and thoughtful work.

                           yours ever,

                           the PLP