There are nearly 70 million refugees on the planet
today, civilians forcibly displaced from their homes by war, famine, poverty
and climate change. Most of these have found sanctuary in neighbouring
countries. A few have made desperate journeys from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and
North Africa to Europe, where they have met the kindness of strangers as well
as the anti-immigrant rhetoric of opportunist and neo-Fascist politicians.
Liminal is an attempt by the poet and activist Laura
Fusco to record the voices of the refugees themselves, especially the women she
has met in camps in France and in Italy. It’s a scrapbook of stories, graffiti
and placards, songs of exile and songs against exile. It’s a book about displacement
and despair, about learning to live outside time and between borders, stateless
and homeless, invisible and unheard, marginal – liminal.