Monthly Archives: November 2017

11.30.17
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November’s Good Stuff

Good news, interviews, happenings, & pubs from our Porkbelly family.

How Darkness Enters a Body by Sarah Nichols
Apples or Pomegranates (cover art: Anita Olivia Koester)
The Girl by Donna Vorreyer (cover image: Alexandra Eldridge)
Dry Spell by Patrick Kindig (cover: Nicci Mechler)
A Map of the Farm Three Miles from the End of Happy Hollow Road by Amorak Huey (cover image: Alexandra Eldridge)

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Dreamland for Keeps (Porkbelly Press, 2018) & How Darkness Enters a Body (Porkbelly Press, 2018) by Sarah Nichols » @onibaba37

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Apples or Pomegranates (Porkbelly Press, 2017)
by Anita Olivia Koester » anitaoliviakoester.com

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The Girl (Porkbelly Press, 2017)
by Donna Vorreyer » donnavorreyer.com

  • “Some Magic” is up on SWWIM. A little spellwork as we go into winter.

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Dry Spell (Porkbelly Press, 2016)
by Patrick Kindig »

  • a new poem, “PDA,” in The National Poetry Review.

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A Map of the Farm Three Miles from the End of Happy Hollow Road (Porkbelly Press, 2016) by Amorak Huey » amorakhuey.net

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11.28.17
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Daughter Shaman Sings Blood Anthem // Kristi Carter

Daughter Shaman Sings Blood Anthem (Kristi Carter) cover: Nicci Mechler

Carter’s work investigates the intersection of intergenerational trauma, survival, feminism, and power. Body-heavy and image-rich, these poems evoke a landscape of the scars and blood we carry with us, all the things that make up our lineage of memory and modes of recovery/survival/learning. It’s an intensely intimate series of poems about the claiming and finding of voice, body, and agency. “And ever since I anchored myself to the ground / and split off from myself, from the cracked husk / of girlhood finished, I return replenished. /  I return, to burn. / I return, with the wound / like a medal—in its gleam, how it sings.” (Porkbelly Press, 2017) » available in our shop » more info & excerpt

about the poet

Kristi Carter is a PhD student in Creative Writing–Poetry with a specialization in Women’s and Gender Studies at University of Nebraska Lincoln. Her poems have appeared in publications including So to Speak, poemmemoirstory, CALYX, Hawaii Review, and Nimrod. Her work examines of the intersection of gender and intergenerational trauma in 20th Century poetics. She holds an MFA from Oklahoma State University.

 

11.14.17
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Apples or Pomegranates (Anita Olivia Koester)

Apples or Pomegranates (cover art: Anita Olivia Koester)

Apples or Pomegranates is an intimate exploration of the spirit housed inside a body, the failings and the strength in each. Sometimes erotic and at other times full of another kind of wanting, this micro chapbook delves into the experience of living boldly, step by step along the path—”a tight-rope walking girl, a pit of lions beneath.” This is the route she takes on these pages, hand out, palm up, if you’ve courage enough to join her. (Porkbelly Press, 2017) » more info & excerpt » available in our shop

about the poet

Anita Olivia Koester is a Chicago poet and author of the chapbooks Marco Polo (Hermeneutic Chaos Press) and Arrow Songs which won Paper Nautilus’ Vella Chapbook Contest. Her poems have been nominated for Best New Poets and Pushcart Prizes, and won Midwestern Gothic’s 2016 Lake Prize in Poetry, So to Speak’s Annual Poetry Contest, and the Jo-Anne Hirshfield Memorial Poetry Award. She is currently the poetry editor for Duende. Her poetry is published or forthcoming in Vinyl, CALYX Journal, Tahoma Literary Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Her work as been supported by the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Vermont Studio Center, and Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA). Visit her online at www.anitaoliviakoester.com.

blurbs

In this collection, Koester gives us three central lessons. One, it is not always necessary to be loud to be ferocious. Two, there are unlimited ways to be naked, most of which happen clothed. Three, even longing that begins with nostalgia can blossom into something altogether and luminously new.

—Marty McConnell

Apples and Pomegranates unravels and interrogates a universe set on its denial of the body feminine. Artistic canon, the expectations and consequences of relationships, biology itself, and even language (its translation or mistranslation) are called into light by Koester’s words. “Travelling the fallopian tubes of the Milky Way” is a tender prospect in every sense of the word. Koester’s command of passion and utterance is that kind of double-edged wonder.

—Keith S. Wilson

Anita is also the cover artist for her chapbook.