Tripwire, a journal of poetics, is devoted to a counter-institutional exploration of radical and experimental modes of contemporary poetics, art, and cultural politics. The journal was founded in 1998 by Yedda Morrison and current editor David Buuck. Six issues were published between 1998-2002, with a special supplement published in September 2004 for the RNC protests in New York, before rebooting in 2014, with the Tripwire Pamphlet Series begun in 2019. Since 2018, The Poetry Center at SFSU has hosted the annual Tripwire Cross-Cultural Poetics Series.

Guiding us to formally and politically interesting writing for almost 20 years now, Tripwire has never failed to surprise and delight. Where else can one find an essay on literature as self-defense, a conceptual art piece in which cursed paintings are sent to bankers, and Greek poetry of the crisis? This journal is what I read when I want to know what is going on. — Sianne Ngai

Tripwire … fuels the Engine to some of the most culturally, politically relevant writing of our time. Every issue is what people call a keeper: an aesthetically flexible yet focused scanning of social relevancies. From the Transnational to Global Speculative to Hyper Local, the journal ranges wide and deep with a consistently that is its own. The feel is a highly artful, paper-vulnerable, quite perishable, but much cherished journal of poetics to be read cover to cover. Tripwire is currently the get with what’s what — now, and a tad beyond. — Rodrigo Toscano

I consider Tripwire to be one of the last real revolutionary magazines out there anymore. — Cait O’Kane

editor: David Buuck
co-founding editor: Yedda Morrison
assistant editor & designer: Kate Robinson Beckwith 
editorial assistants: Lara Durback & Coco Fitterman
minister of information: Fadl Fakhouri
reviews editor: Caleb Beckwith
translations editor: Zêdan Xelef

We mourn the passing of longtime Tripwire designer Cassandra Smith (1980-2020), who was responsible for the look and layout template of the current series.

Donate to the Tripwire Translation Grant fundraising campaign to support translators of contemporary & archival avant-garde writing!

Follow us on Instagram @tripwire_journal.