Poetry & Migration

Recently, poet Divya Victor read poems at the Gayle Karch Cook Center from her book Curb. Curb explores both on the bureaucratic hurdles that immigrants to America face, and the threat of violence against them. Many of the poems in Curb document the assaults and murders in public spaces of Indian-Americans and Indian immigrants. They describe, in sharp and vivid detail, moments from the deaths of five South Asian men killed by white supremacists. Much of the language in the poems comes from what Victor calls “concrete media” - documents like trial transcripts, interviews with police officers, and clips of dash cam or surveillance footage. Curb was first published in an edition of 30 handmade artist books made by Victor’s collaborator Aaron Cohick. They featured ink rubbings taken directly from sidewalks and curbs.