When I first put out a call for poems about protest, I was expecting a slew of submissions reflecting on the Minneapolis uprising and subsequent protests of this past summer. I imagined impassioned odes on black liberation— “No one is free until we are all free,” or angry protest anthems– “Off the Pigs!” In fact, this special section was born of the protests I went to this past summer, and I wrote the call for poems inspired by those heady moments, where liberation felt tangible and real and close.

Yet months later, after the ardor of the summer had long worn off, what I received was far more varied, and harder to force into any neat category such as “anti-racist poetry” or “political poetry.” Inadvertently, the many submissions I received reflected my own hesitation towards labelling or tying up all that occurred in 2020. There were poems of sadness, anger, hunger, fear, joy, hope. Most of all, the human toll the year had brung was evident everywhere. The submissions showed me that now, pandemics, violence against black people and political upheaval have become the baseline from which we must love, work, fight and generally get on with our lives. This has impacted every part of existence in both small and large ways. The varied poems and essays of this section grapple with all aspects of upheaval in 2020. Certainly, in the poems below, we see echoes of the radical political poetry and writings of the Black Power movement. But there are just as many poems that are about quiet, everyday moments about the “new normal”—that already hackneyed term which gets thrown around these days. From anger and hope about the summer’s protests, to sad reflections on isolation from Covid-19, or even boredom, these poems do not present a coherent message. That is, perhaps, precisely the point. These difficult and strange months have shown us that is no such thing as “political poetry” or “protest poetry” that can be neatly put into a category.

One of this year’s contributors, David Rice writes of this time: “we feel as though we’re under a spell that we’re struggling to break free from, hoping to awaken into a newly clarified future.” It feels, perhaps, like a never ending time loop, where things remain the same, yet are constantly stuck on outrage. 2020 was a year of upheaval, isolation, fear. Yet, it was also a year of clarification; if at the very least, we see now with open eyes so many things we tried to avoid for so long. What is at stake in political protests, climate justice, activism, public health policy is a fight for the survival of our democracy, planet, and most of all, life. In the spirit of the radical 70’s feminists, this past year has shown us that everything personal is political. Meaning: small and large, private, or public, everything is deeply intertwined. Everyday moments—work, quarrels, walks—personal tragedies and joys—breakups, new love affairs, deaths of loved ones—collide with national and international tragedies. Whether it be as quotidian as always wearing masks when shopping and new ways of working, to the election and uprising of 2020, the year has shown us that no aspect of our lives is sacred and removed from the collective.

Thus these poems together show us the full range of political moments in 2020. We are all interconnected, and every aspect of our lives has been infected by the struggles that have yet to have any resolution. These poems then, rather than presenting us with any answers, have led us to a (perhaps unanswerable) question: what next?