This version of modernity is weird, but it isn’t unprecedented.
The word weird comes from the Old English wyrd. Consider the Wyrd Sisters in Shakespeare’s Macbeth — also known as The Three Fates, goddesses who were portrayed as terrifying and odd. So when we say something is “weird,” what we really mean is fate: that which is inevitable. Recurring. The feeling of having been here before.
Through a chance act of blackout poetry, modern voices mingle weirdly as characters in a medieval plague. The UNPRECEDENTED Project asserts that plagues are familiar; that humanity has survived before and indeed can survive again. Suppose these kinds of global tragedies are not apocalyptic, but rather cyclical. And the renaissance that always seems to follow — perhaps destined.
Click on a thumbnail below to browse the anonymous poetry collections, curated in groups of 10.
You can also view how the pages spread on this map.
