Updated: May 4
The last couple of years have been a literary whirlwind for me, not to mention the many life changes I have experienced including remarriage, becoming a grandmother, and moving to a new state. So much has changed, mostly for the better. And this is true for my writing as well. Over a decade of focused attention, I have written through past life experiences while engaging dialogues on trauma, feminism, religion, and ecology, and now, much to my delight, I am watching those poems and poetry books find good publishing homes.
tether & lung, a book chronicling the fifteen years I was married to a man who struggled with his sexual identity and came out as gay after divorce will be published by TEXAS REVIEW PRESS this coming spring, 2025. I’ve written eight books about my first marriage and I’m not sure there won’t be more. Those books contain violence, transgression, betrayal, and grief. Three of them have already been published but this, my fourth, tether & lung, stands out as my favorite among them because it best sets the scene and landscape of my home and heart those fifteen years. None of my other books capture the constant anticipation I felt during my marriage, as if our storyline were suddenly going to wax romantic and take a desirable turn. Images in tether & lung instantly transport me to our family farm and my first discoveries concerning my husband’s sexuality.
Rebecca Lindenberg’s Love an Index, in which she writes grief after losing her partner, influenced the poems in this book. The context is very different, but reading Love, an Index was like holding up a mirror to my own soul. There’s a breathiness and subtle agony in her book that felt familiar, and that I wanted in my book as well. I believe I have accomplished this. Women, like Lindenberg and myself, write these heart-rending narratives—these poems—all the time with unflinching emotional honesty. We tend not to turn away from the ugly parts of anything, even love. Despite divorce, sexual tension, and heartbreak, the poems I brought into tether & lung are sensual and tender because those feelings were part of the story too—facets among many facets.
But my most exciting literary news to date is that my book Wolves in Shells was chosen by Tomás Q. Morín as the winner of the 2024 Backwaters Prize in Poetry with UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS. I am honored and amazed. I am grateful. Writing is hard work. Writing to understand oneself while building an audience is very hard work. I'm probably better at the former than the latter.
Wolves in Shells embraces honest questions and vulnerability while telling the story of a woman navigating homelessness and memories as she attempts to leave a violent partner. Reflecting on her familial heritage, this survivor grapples with the way she, the women of her history, and her daughter have been conditioned to accommodate the demands of male ego and predation. The poems in this book are reflective, clear-eyed, and incisive, featuring O-Six, a wolf born into the rewilding territory of Yellowstone National Park in the 90s, as a metaphor for women who must cope with violence and survive on their own. Drawing from Gaston Bachelard’s quote “wolves in shells are crueler than stray ones” the narratives in this aptly-named text consider the way that survival is a balance of protectiveness, risk, trust, and escape.
For me, this book exists as my own ‘hero’s journey.' It is a monomyth in that the speaker of these poems is forced to survive against the odds as she searches for a place to establish a stable socio-economic situation. But this book also holds stories of other women aggressed and caught in physical and emotional migratory patterns that do not have a clear destination. Dedicated to my daughter, I could not be more pleased concerning the timeliness of this book's acceptance and publication. We are entering a new election year and women, all women, are on the ballot. Our survival and opportunity is at stake. In 2020 I didn't get to cast my vote. Below is a poem from Wolves in Shells, first published in About Place Journal, sharing that experience. I am looking forward to casting my vote in November. Dear reader, please join me in voting for our nation's better future.
Friends & Poets, as you are preparing your schedules for AWP 2024, consider joining Maya Williams, Matt Miller, Lynn Melnick, Octavio Quintanilla, and I for our poetry craft and criticism panel....
WHEN THE OLD NAMES FAIL US
I promise you, this will be a rewarding experience. With depth and vulnerability, we will be reading our poems and covering a range of topics concerning trauma, disability, gender, anthropomorphism, sex work, and translanguaging. We will be opening our souls, sharing our scruples, and encouraging thoughtful conversation. We will be offering you, our audience, questions to ponder and poetry prompts to inspire your own creativity. We hope to see you there!
PANEL SYNOPSIS:
Language evolves. Words both gain and lose power with social movements, cultural expectations, and personal transformation. Sometimes vocabulary evades inspiring a search for expression to hold all our meanings. In this panel, four poets will consider the role of poetry in the process of naming and renaming as personal, social, and cultural evolution demands shifts in how we speak about ourselves and contemporary themes.
PANELIST BIOS:
Kimberly Ann Priest is the author of Slaughter the One Bird as well as three chapbooks, with books forthcoming from Texas Review Press & Unsolicited Press. An assistant professor at Michigan State University, her work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Copper Nickel, and Birmingham Poetry Review. Find her work at kimberlyannpriest.com.
Maya Williams (ey/they/she) is currently the seventh poet laureate of Portland, ME. Eir debut poetry collection Judas & Suicide (Game Over Books) is a New England Book Award finalist. They also have a second poetry collection, Refused a Second Date (Harbor Editions). Find her work at mayawilliamspoet.com.
Matt W. Miller is the author of Tender the River, The Wounded for the Water, Club Icarus, and Cameo Diner. A winner of the Pablo Neruda Prize, The Trifecta Poetry Prize, and fellowships from Stanford University and the Sewanee Writers Conference, he teaches and lives in coastal New Hampshire.
Lynn Melnick is the author of the memoir, I've Had to Think Up a Way to Survive: On Trauma, Persistence, and Dolly Parton (2022), as well as three poetry collections, Refusenik (2022), Landscape with Sex and Violence (2017), and If I Should Say I Have Hope (2012).
Octavio Quintanilla is the founder of the literary festival VersoFrontera & publisher of Alabrava Press. His poetry collection, The Book of Wounded Sparrows, is forthcoming from Texas Review Press. He teaches Literature and CW at Our Lady of the Lake University. IG: @writeroctavioquintanilla
For your convenience, find a full panel outline and panel transcript on the AWP website here: https://www.awpwriter.org/awp_conference/event_detail/24929
SAFE TRAVELS EVERYONE!!