Alive and Paranoid is a monumental artistic and cultural achievement from Georgia-based worker, journalist, and organizer, D. Musa Springer. This truly beautiful work bridges poetry, photography, and avant-garde design in a way that portrays the timeless, suspended moments of the tireless revolutionary heart in a light that is at once familiar, personal, and poignant. With moving poetry and beautiful photography from cover to cover, Alive and Paranoid—the second book in Iskra Books' popular Red Poetry Series—feels sacred: a window into the personal, deeply reflective life of one of today's leading and most heartfelt poets.

 

Available as both a low-cost, black and white, softcover edition and as a full-color, resplendent hardcover, Alive and Paranoid is an essential creative work, sure to endure for decades to come.

 

"This book was written in the hamster wheel, in the sense that D. Musa Springer penned these poems not in leisure but in labor-in spite and because of the sleepless hustle Amerika demands. Such hustle-against the backdrop of a racist, capitalist society-was only survivable because of the poet's own impulse for writing verse. [...] Springer's 'poetry of purpose, ' is personal and incendiary, it gloats and it weeps, and, most importantly, it is not neatly-trimmed to fit within the borders of a sparkly billboard screen in Times Square. It is blunt and unconcerned with platitudes. Alive and Paranoid journeys through Atlanta, Cuba, dreamscapes of Palestine, and the sonic values of hip-hop, offering a kaleidoscopic look, even a sense of liberty, into Springer's life in the hamster wheel."

-Mohammed El-Kurd

From the Foreword to Alive and Paranoid

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"For us, Alive and Paranoid is more than the artistic ramblings of a friend.It is hours and hours of ki kis, criticisms, and disagreements passed back and forth on WhatsApp and in person. In these pages, you will find many reflections that Musa wrote live and direct from Havana, Cuba, where people have been struggling under the weight of 60-year-old economic sanctions placed on the county-with the intent to kill."

-Erica and Salifu

From the Foreword to Alive and Paranoid

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About

Pub. Date: 15 March 2024

ISBN: 9781088025673 (SC) / 9781088018408 (HC)

Size: 5.5" by 8.5" softcover / 5.5" by 8.5" hardcover

Page Count: 170 pages

Soft-texture, matte finish softcover / Soft-texture, matte finish hardcover

Black & white print (softcover) / Full color, ultra premium print with matte pages and gloss imagery (hardcover)

50lb creme interior paper (softcover) / 70lb white interior paper (hardcover)