Poem: Moriel Rothman-Zecher
Title of Poem: Vu Zaynen Di Yidn
Artist: Allison Grace Erdelyi
Poster design: Kevin Jones
Project Sponsor: The Alan Cheuse International Writers Center 2025-26
the politics of language / the language of politics
with thanks: Mason Exhibitions & Yassmin Salem
About the project:
The broadside project is a commissioned project by Leeya Mehta, featuring international writers and local area artists. This is the third broadside in the series. Each broadside takes many months of collaboration and the postcards and posters that we create are available at our events.
The poet and novelist Moriel Rothman-Zecher says:
I wrote this poem while on a trip to Krakow, Poland. There to perform as part of a Yiddish-inflected performance art piece, I was shaken, jarred, by the ubiquitous advertisements for tours to Auschwitz, by the juxtaposition - ah bitter! ah human! - between the catastrophic and the pleasant, the genocidal and the mundane. What do we do with the legacies of murder and displacement, that are, at its core, our collective, human legacies? How can we rejoice and play when, at every moment –then, today, tomorrow (all now)— so many people are suffering so acutely and unjustly? How do we honor the memories of our murdered ancestors, siblings, children, comrades, loves? What is the purpose of a poem? Elegy? Protest? Prayer? How do we awaken, how do we sleep at night?
As she collaborated on this project artist Allison Grace Erdelyi explains,
My work focuses on folklore and storytelling as a way to connect with my heritage. By incorporating traditional narratives, I examine how history and cultural memory shape identity, using printmaking and mixed media to reflect on belonging, transformation, and self-discovery.
Merging these two artist-writers, the designer, Kevin Jones explains his process as he brings together the Cheuse Center broadsides,
As the original art did not already have the text integrated, I wanted to respect that while making the combination. I'm trying to reference both illuminated manuscripts and the work of John Heartfield, a German designer whose work mocked and satirized Hitler and the Nazi movement.
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About Allison Grace Erdelyi:
Allison Grace Erdelyi was born in Manassas, VA. She studied printmaking and painting at George Mason University and graduated with her BFA in studio arts.
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About Moriel Rothman-Zecher:
Moriel Rothman-Zecher is a National Book Foundation ‘5 Under 35’ Honoree, and the author of two novels, Before All the World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022), which was named an NPR Best Book of 2022, and which Moriel is currently in the process of adapting for the stage, and Sadness Is a White Bird (Atria Books / Simon and Schuster, 2018), which was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize, among other honors. Moriel is also the author of the poetry collection, I Still Won’t Have Known (forthcoming in 2028 from BOA Editions). Moriel’s work has been published in The American Poetry Review, Barrelhouse, Colorado Review, The Common, Jewish Currents, Lit Hub, Nashville Review, The New York Times, Poetry Daily, The Paris Review’s Daily, ZYZZYVA, and elsewhere. Moriel is the recipient of two MacDowell Fellowships for Literature, and a Donald Hall Scholarship for Poets from the Bennington Writing Seminars, where Moriel received an MFA in Poetry. Moriel teaches at Swarthmore College, as a Visiting Assistant Professor of English Literature and Creative Writing, and is also a member of the faculty of the Bennington Writing Seminars’ MFA Program. He has been a visiting writer to the Cheuse Center and his novel Sadness Is a White Bird has been part of the curriculum affiliated with the Center.
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About Kevin Jones:
Kevin Jones is the designer and artist who manages the Cheuse Center’s broadside projects.
Kevin Jones is a visual artist and designer from the Northern Virginia area. Kevin’s visual practice focuses on the themes of race, intersectionality, equity and accessibility. He filters these themes through masterwork re-contextualization using pop culture, American comic books, anime and manga as lenses. He is fascinated by the concept of Afro-futurism and the implicit hopefulness presented by the concept and tries to harness it into much of his work.
Born in Washington D.C., Kevin grew up in Clifton, Virginia before attending Virginia Commonwealth University in the early 2000s where he studied illustration. Years later he returned to academia to further his education, receiving an AAS in graphic design at Northern Virginia Community College before transferring to George Mason University where he graduated in December 2024, with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts.
As an illustrator Kevin has published a book of some of his science fiction and fantasy illustrations called Transmissions from the Darkside of a Destroyed Moon as well as a variety of commission-based work for individuals. In his fine arts practice he has presented work in several shows in the Washington Baltimore area including, Re-Wire, Out of Order, and Singularity. He has also won jury prizes for his entries in the SGA Art Expo as well as the NVCC Art Show.
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The poem:
VU ZAYNEN DI YIDN
painted toes & a light
trip to Auschwitz
if you’d like
how fun! a graffito
that reads in yiddish
where are the jews
but this isn’t like
that all the carpets
are laid bare now
clogged noses from
back home our own
leopard leopold
III paces impetuously
in the garden my
heart is a silkscreen
church bells a mourning
dove that sounds like
a coin caught
in a throat a needle
a sliver of the present
flowers, yidn, and sky
—Krakow, June 2023
Poem Copyright, Moriel Rothman-Zecher
March 02, 2026