As a poet and typographer, Emet Ezell works with the materiality of language. For Ezell, words and letters are not empty husks of signification; rather, they are charged with historical residue and mystical energy. In this artist’s talk, Ezell will speak about their artistic work and research in Sabile, Latvia, and Lublin, Poland — two sites of Jewish ethnic cleansing and dispossession. Illuminating complex and concealed micro-histories, Ezell asks: What happens to language in the wake of annihilation? Amidst ruin and erasure, how can we engage the past without getting stuck?

Emet Ezell currently lives in Berlin, Germany. Their work spans themes of devotion, dispossession, ruin, and return. Ezell has received fellowships and honors from the Berlin Senate for Social and Cultural Cohesion, the European Commission, Pedvāle Open Air Art Museum, Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, and the Vermont Studio Center. They will be a 2025 artist-in-residence at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program and their typographic prints will next be exhibited in Latvia. Recent writing has appeared or is forthcoming from The American Poetry Review, AGNI, Poetry Northwest, and Los Angeles Review of Books.