Award-winning book and letterpress artists Felicia Rice and Theresa Whitehill (former Poet Laureate of Ukiah, CA.) created a multi-genre project, Heavy Lifting, that speaks in poetry, letterpress, and film to the multiple crises of recent years: fires, Covid, Black Lives Matter, housing injustice, and more.

Roxi Power talks with these remarkable artists about their "urgent publishing" and how to "lift the fallen" with imagery and words focused on birds. Hundreds of thousands of birds fell from the sky during the fires. The artists carry the burden of memory and accountability in what Whitehill calls "this nervous slice of history." We dive into their trans-genre work, poetry's relationship to letterpress, and their process of countering Covid's isolation through radical collaboration.

On August 24, 2-4pm, Rice and Whitehill will bring their Heavy Lifting listening tour to the Felton, CA. public library for the 4th anniversary of California's CZU Lightning Complex Fire. It's a chance to commemorate our losses, including Rice's home and studio. Rice's response to this loss was to collaborate with Whitehill to create a record of these crises as well as ways to survive them, through community and "protest beauty."

https://movingpartspress.com/publications/heavy-lifting/

https://theresawhitehill.com/