Errant Elements is a chapbook series organized around the Periodic Table of the Elements, edited by Marina Peterson and Gretchen Bakke (with founding editor Megan Gette). 

As scholars, artists, poets and otherwise, we propose an imaginative refiguring of the periodic table. Dmitri Mendeleev left gaps in his model of the periodic table for the not-yet-known — elements that the prior century sought to standardize and classify by atomic weight and chemical properties — to allow history to fill in, but not to leave open to speculation, or to leave alone. What can be made from what is that isn’t yet? How might the elements be constitutive of something different? What is missing or lacking? How can those absences be incorporated or invented into the base materials? What needs to change from what we have to make what we don’t have? 

The form – 118+ folded chapbooks designed to be combined in various ways – supports a collective exploration of the combinatory affordances and stories of the elements. The format is a 5×5” trifold brochure that folds into a square. This allows readers to connect pieces in different ways, constructing official or imagined elements and reading across diverse entries in ways that open new imaginaries. 

Over the 7 issues there is at least one contribution for each element. Several contributors have also written across multiple elements, or worked with their combinations in the form of a molecule (for example, hydrogen and oxygen in water). Contributors have thought broadly and imaginatively through an element, engaging them in more and less literal ways; considered less common elements; and used letter combinations as inspiration (e.g. FeAr). The simplicity of form, of folds, has invited a proliferation of hues, fields, and approaches, and entries include prose, poetry, line drawings and graphics, as well as musical compositions.