At the Edge of Arrival
Poems and Printing: Raheleh Filsoofi
Bookmaking: Jerry Bedor Phillips
Completion Date: August 11th, 2025
As a Middle Eastern immigrant in the American South for over two decades, I see this region as a living archive of labor, displacement, and survival. This work honors those who came before— from the Africans forced to Charleston whose arrival reshaped the land, to David Drake, the enslaved potter and poet of Edgefield whose monumental vessels joined utility with quiet resistance. My connection to him is through clay and the resolve to leave marks that hold what is buried, remembered, and heard.
At the Edge of Arrival is the culmination of two years of travel, reflection, and transformation through soil. Between Spring 2023 and Spring 2025, I traveled across nine southern regions of the United States—Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida—collecting soil and processing clay from each location. The poems are printed with a single mixed clay body made from all these collected soils, its shifting tones carrying the varied grounds folded into one material. This clay anchors both the poems and the labor behind them, holding the imprints of memory, migration, and the act of navigating (un)familiar lands.
At the Edge of Arrival, Argillotype (Dust Print) 2025
At the Edge of Arrival
At the Edge of Arrival, Argillotype (Dust Print) 2025