Null Landing
by isaiah a. hines

Null Landing explores the intricacies of black queer life and delves into the concept of "nullness," a state of being without properties or legal force, amounting to nothing. Through these poems, the author establishes connections with elements of nature such as bacterium, birds, bodies of water, and mineral deposits, as well as with black creatives across various artistic disciplines.

The collection combines geologic fieldnotes and experimental performance scores to create a poetics of incalculability. It challenges conventional measures and speculates on value, confronting colonial language and disciplinary boundaries. With a focus on the geopolitical encounter, these poems orchestrate black spatial practice, data aggregation, and performative utterance. They explore themes of archaeometallurgy, ornithology, and quantum mechanics, guiding the poet and reader through remote sites of poetic exchange known as null islands.

The poems engage in meandering annotation and citation as a way to delve into vast architectures of information and the nuanced continuum of meaning. An aerial grid is used to recalibrate and warp, accommodating contested origin points and scattered human narratives, creating a constellation of coordinates. NULL LANDING dwells in the spaces between virtual and actual topographies, learning from GIS enthusiasts, single-celled organisms, mineral deposits, and black creatives from various fields. It examines the technologies through which places, individuals, and raw materials are extracted and abstracted for mapping, subduing, and capital accumulation, while also reclaiming disavowed geospatial knowledges.