Protocols: An Erasure

An urgent, poetic exploration of power, antisemitism, memory, and the dangers and possibilities of language.PROTOCOLS: An Erasure transforms the world's most influential antisemitic document, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, into an erasure poem exploring essential questions of power, history, and language. Moving freely across the page, reinstating space and possibility where malevolent words once were crammed, this book-length poem excavates the big questions buried within the source text: What is the true nature of power, and how is it tied to a fear of the unknown? How can language, weaponized and eroded, also be a tool for healing? And how can silence help us reckon with history and shape the future? Accompanying the poem, a lyric essay excavates the poet's deep personal connection to the erased text, weaving personal and collective history by traversing former concentration camps, immigrant communities in New York City, and remote desert wildernesses, and posing new possibilities for a less deterministic, more spacious and peaceful world.

Daniela Naomi Molnar is a poet, artist, and writer who creates with color, water, language, and place. Her debut book, CHORUS, won the 2024 Staford/Hall Oregon Book Award for Poetry and was selected by Kazim Ali as the winner of Omnidawn Press's 1st/2nd Book Award. Her book-length poem “Memory of a Larger Mind” accompanies photographs by Julian Stettler in The Glacier Is a Being (Sturm & Drang, 2023). Her work is anthologized in the forthcoming second volume of The Ecopoetry Anthology and in Breaking the Glass: A Contemporary Jewish Poetry Anthology from the Laurel Review. Forthcoming books include: Memory of a Larger Mind (Omnidawn, 2028) and Light / Remains (Bored Wolves, 2026). Molnar lives in Portland, Oregon and in the high deserts of the North American West. www.danielamolnar.com / Instagram: @daniela_naomi_molnar