"Read By, Written By" is a poetry book compiled to accompany Bonniers Konsthall 's exhibition "The Image of War." In a kind of poetic relay the editors, Raqs Media Collective from Delhi and Theodor Ringborg from Stockholm, contacted people from around the world to read a poem to us. "This book was born on a blue carpet in the lobby of a down-market Shanghai hotel, in the days and nights of the opening of the Shanghai Biennale. A motley collection of artists, curators, writers, filmmakers, none of them professional poets, gathered each night after the day s events for drinks and conversation in the hotel lobby. Some of these people ought to have been foes, given the geo-politics of our time, but they ended up being friends. The cadence of poetry passed between bodies, especially between speaking mouths and listening ears. This was poetry shared, by word of mouth, in praise and in passing, by those who listened and remembered. It was this experience that suggested the form and content of