Position Paper #53: National Archivist
In the new place which will be also the old place we will save useful things neatly, with backups, but not too many, not too much. Everyone will train in some archives, teaching methods & learning our shared reverence for research which is reverence for knowledge which is reverence for community which is reverence for being which is reverence for this earth & all universes. We will keep kitchen archives & garden archives & comms archives & decisions archives & process archives & experiment archives & we will consult these archives when we need background or inspiration or instruction, or for pleasure, the great pleasure of the archive, the great archive of pleasure; we will call this art, how we spend our days & nights.
Copyright © 2026 by Andrea Lawlor. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 9, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I first started writing out my positions on various issues of the day back in 2011 and found that I was imagining a near-future, queer, anarchist, utopian, seceded version of Western Mass[achusetts], where I live. Over the intervening years, I’ve found myself taking positions on aspects of the ongoing polycrisis, such as climate catastrophe, genocidal autocratic ethnostates, the rise of fascism. In this poem, written at MacDowell, I address Trump’s abrupt firing of the National Archivist of the United States in early 2025.”
—Andrea Lawlor
Andrea Lawlor
