Petitionary long poems: Layli Long Soldier, Juliana Spahr, and Srikanth Reddy

This essay discusses how three contemporary poets, Layli Long Soldier, Juliana Spahr, and Srikanth Reddy have engaged with new internet communicative strategies. Each poet reframes existing texts, notably the US government apology for the treatment of indigenous peoples, reports on the Gulf oil disaster, and Kurt Waldheim’s memoir of his years as a Nazi and UN Secretary General. The essay shows how their textual strategies draw on the form of the petition, the cumulative endorsement of a request for political or civic change that underlies much social media