JAVERIA HASNAIN, SIN

Every one of Hasnain’s poems is a revelation. There is an immediacy in this collection; the language dynamic yet deeply rooted in landscapes which map the sacred necessities of desire. With each poem, Hasnain peels back the self in different registers. The lyric becomes a medium for the poet’s longing–for homeland, the Beloved, for the poem itself. As she writes in “Water is a Sin,” Hasnain’s work explores “the privilege of being a woman,/ of housing a body desirable to touch.” I am moved by each poem’s quiet refusal to be still. The lines move as the poet’s mind does–breathless and inexplicable. Hasnain is a wonder, and this is a beautiful, prismatic debut.

—J. Mae Barizo, author of tender machines

Tendered in the narratives planted throughout this book is the iconography of the body and its desires. We are not spared the disdain, the erotic, the grief, and the strains placed on language.

—Adedayo Agarau, Stegner Fellow, author of The Arrival of Rain

Javeria Hasnain’s SIN is a chapbook fluent in the privilege of pleasure and mortality. Quick-footed and capacious, this chapbook circles questions of morbidity, morality and mortality like a shark. Decadently tongue-in-cheek, luxuriously voracious and covetously intelligent, these poems stand up and join the ranks of other dark surrealists’ like Alejandra Pizarnik, Sylvia Plath and Remedios Varo. Embalmed in a shadowy Islamic ennui, Hasnain has created an exegesis of sex and faith so empowering, angels might cower before it. Here we find sex as a speculative sport, “mercy [as] a howl” and sin as a fact of size. A genius in comparison with a stunning ability to move between cosmic and ordinary language, Hasnain has revealed herself to be a poet unafraid of any hungry horror, vibrant vitrol, or Dionysian damnation. Coyotes, countries and carnal desire alike flit across these pages like bats, imbued with an ancient apathy, poised to grow and loom over us in their gargantuan glory. Impeccable audacity and timeless daring. I’m in awe.

—Sanna Wani, author of My Grief, The Sun

Available on Amazon.

ESPERANZA CINTRÓN, BOULDERS
2022 POETRY CHAPBOOK FINALIST

Crab grass and dandelions. Verdant rainforests in shattered shops. Raw music of urban life and relentless birdsong. Belle Isle, Eastern Market, Midtown, Cobo and the history of humanity, of capitalism. Absence, presence. The red-eyed nocturnal animal that will not flee your car. Grind and bump of steel, rust, wrecking balls, and yet the turquoise river, its day diamonds. Ah, such song, sensuality, breathless lists and litanies. From the chilling reality of the first poem to the crushing quote from Keynes at the end, this is a body-and-soul rocking, rapping, jiving celebration of the spirit of Detroit. Though there is grief for a lost era, and the natural world has predators whose “absolute power hungers for you,” Nature in its stark beauty triumphs everywhere. Cintrón’s electric poems will send currents through you. This collection contains a powerful energy, and like Nature itself, becomes vibrant and alive in the hands of this masterful poet.

—Zilka Joseph, author of In Our Beautiful Bones, Sparrows and Dust, Sharp Blue Search of Flame

Esperanza Cintrón’s Boulders is a celebratory lyric examining the rich beauty of Detroit. The city’s cold, its spring, its island and its birds all make appearances in this collection where the city’s natural landscape is a lively character overtaking abandoned buildings and threatening to cross the threshold of houses. Cintrón’s lush images and stunning sounds cascade throughout the book building an unforgettable love song dedicated to the history and the present of post-industrial Detroit.—Nandi Comer, author of Tapping OutLike the ‘boulders’ these poems are named for, Cintrón’s collection traces the particular urban geology and geography that predated, formed, and eventually crumbled—And in between the sidewalk cracks and sunken railways, empty plumbing stores and abandoned factories, life is teeming: a cardinal, a possum; quackgrass and honeysuckle; butterflies and bumblebees and all manner of inner-city flora and fauna (not least of all, people). From the salt mines to the Eastern Market, the stadium to the Q-Line, Cintrón’s Boulders is a suite of odes, blues, elegies, and incantations of place that “sparkle like silver talismans tossed across the strait.”

—Brandi Katherine Herrera, author of Mother is a Body

Available on Amazon.

ABDULJALAL MUSA ALIYU, DOLOUR

Abduljalal lays bare an enthralling poetic voice, one that invites readers to not just listen to its gripping narratives about the myriad facets of atrocities faced by humanity, but to bear witness to the testimonies of their consequences. In assertive strides, he navigates the intricate framework of family dynamics, displacement, personal and geographical violence, loss and estrangement from the self, love, lineage, benevolence and even, existence. Encyclopedia of Dolour is a lighthouse ushering us all to the feet of a poet whose voice will echo through many generations to come.

—Abu Bakr Sadiq, author of Leaked Footages

In Encyclopedia of Dolour, Aliyu pulls out profound emotions and personal experiences that express deeply the human condition. Through a chain of verses, the chapbook explores love, loss, family, and the underbelly of faith. His words testify to the function of poetry to capture the gloom of life, drawing readers into a brave world where difficult and sensitive motifs are painted, with each poem a vessel for shared empathy and understanding. The collection holds the poet’s quest for death to his agony, as he navigates the chaos of his mind, moving inside the circle of it all.

—Samuel A. Adeyemi, author of Rose Ash

Chapbooks are supposed to be interim selections to present new or uncollected work, but Abduljalal’s chapbook has the real feel and thrill of a full collection by an established poet. I am quite sure a full collection (which, given his talent, is just a matter of time) would prove that unmistakable promise and underline the fact that Abduljalal is destined to go to those fabled places where great poets go.

—Ismail Bala, author of Line of Sight

With a voice that is both urgent and laser-sharp, this poet is calling on us to take a step back, wear our goggles of compassion and take a cursory glance at the disintegrating ethos that are fast eroding the earth upon which we stand as a society. Impressively, he speaks with the power of a hurricane that will force open the all hidden crevices of our closed conscience. This poet roars, yet he is tender, compassionate and reassuring.

—Umar Abubakar Sidi, author of The Poet of Dust and Like Butterflies Scattered About by Art Rascals

Available on Amazon.

SUE MELL, GIVING CARE
WINNER OF THE 2021 PROSE CHAPBOOK CONTEST

In Giving Care, Sue Mell delivers short, sharp and powerfully rendered essays on caregiving a parent in decline. Mell navigates the shifting mother-daughter boundaries along a complicated past, the relentless present with its crises and consequences, and on toward the inevitable future never far from view. Written with lyrical control, humor and truth at the core, Mell’s essays reveal a kind of grief that infiltrates further with each terrible task, while revealing each terrible task as a profound act of love.

—Stephanie Gangi, acclaimed novelist of The Next and Carry the Dog

Giving Care is a brief yet resonant collection that captures the quiet intimacy of caregiving in a series of vivid snapshots. Powerful, truthful, and never sentimental, it’s a tour through the world of a child turned adult and an adult returning to childhood.

—Kathryn Kulpa, author of Girls on Film

For everyone worried about easing their mother’s decline, or about how their kids will handle their own decline, or what they’ll do without kids when the time comes, Sue Mell’s Giving Care is a box of bittersweet chocolates. One brief moment after another captured in urgent flashes, beautifully expressing what it’s like to keep going through moments dark and light in parental tending, hoping each day for our favorite flavor, that this one will be a good one.

—Allison K Willams, author of Seven Drafts

Available on Amazon.

ERIN LITTLE, PERSONAL INJURY
2023 POETRY CHAPBOOK WINNER

“I am thinking about longing, the oldest poetic concept, and the ways in which Erin Little brings longing to an unmatched understanding, one that is crucial, painful, and innermost in her debut chapbook, Personal Injury. Little is a writer I would follow anywhere. Her interrogations of longing take us through multiple and immediate dimensions: longing through the body as a cancer patient in a hospital; longing through her parents praying for a complete cure; longing as a youth in pain needing to be heard; and longing as an adult feeling love in rain and the rain in love. She implores the reader to be thoughtful with their words—this move hits the highest poetic marks. Little questions the definition of love, and she makes me stop—I turn the corner and this meditation will forever unwind in me.”

—Dorothy Chan, author of Babe and Return of the Chinese Femme

“Understanding since childhood that death can come from within, the speaker of these poems is acutely conscious of the various and particular ways her body remains present in the world, as a lover, daughter, observer, friend. Erin Little sets these experiences down with assuredness, even when they hurt. These poems record something akin to what Rilke once described as ‘the chill, uncertain sunlight of those long / childhood hours when you were so afraid,’ but they also make room for a ‘face lit like a bulb / ecstatic as a baby who’s found some / thing that moves her.’ There’s cracks of light in the gloom, there’s blood within a life. Personal Injury makes space for all of it, in gorgeous language and wonderfully sharp images. It’s a joy to read this work.”

—Heather Christle, author of The Crying Book and Heliopause

“Erin Little’s Personal Injury plays with physical harm and emotional hurt as it plays with poetic structures—from the sonnet and the villanelle to the list and the chart. Each poem tangles with its own existence and makes its reader question what existence is for, if not for relishing our entanglements.”

—Mark Yakich, author of Spiritual Exercises and The Importance Of Peeling Potatoes In Ukraine

Available on Amazon.

SARA SIDDIQUI CHANSARKAR, SKIN OVER MILK
2021 PROSE CHAPBOOK CONTEST RUNNER-UP

Skin Over Milk tells the story of young Chutki and her two sisters who bear the weight of being unwanted daughters in 1990’s India. Told through Chutki’s eyes, we feel the innocence that is childhood, allowing the gratitude for a crust of bread thrown away by her brothers, or the simple joy in making prank phone calls. We meet characters, such as the father who curses their mother for giving him useless girls, the brothers who don’t seem to appreciate the luxury of education. But we also meet the loving grandfather, Dada, who will die and watch over them like a star in the sky and their beautiful, beautiful mother, Ammi, who does what she can to make all of their lives bearable. Exquisitely written with a jeweler’s eye for detail, the deftest of hands with characterization and storytelling, this is a brilliant and unforgettable read.

― Francine Witte, author of Dressed All Wrong for This and The Way of the Wind

“The summer of 1990 brought rain and more rain to our little town of Muzaffarnagar.” Thus begins Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar’s chapbook, Skin Over Milk, an elegantly written and immersive family story told over the course of twelve short chapters and through the collective point of view of the family’s siblings. We readers get a strong sense of this particular family’s joys and heartaches, struggles and traditions. Chansarkar knows how to weave her stories seamlessly and disarmingly, with heart and humor and tenderness. It is a testament to this writer’s mastery that I never wanted the story to end.

― Kathy Fish, author of Wild Life: Collected Works

With precision and insight, these evocative stories within a story speak of rain and tears, of sisterhood and solidarity, of poverty, and growing up as girls under the lashes of patriarchy. Chansarkar evokes the poetry and brutality of small-town India with a deftness that makes it impossible to tell which is which.

― Damyanti Biswas, author of You Beneath Your Skin and The Blue Bar

In lush and incisive prose, Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar tells the story of three sisters growing up in a home and a culture that treats them as valueless, who nonetheless scheme and dream to claim space: “I sat squished between my sisters, dreaming of a seat of my own someday.” Like the secret a mother whispers in the ear of her crying baby girl to protect her from her husband’s rage, Skin Over Milk is confiding, talismanic. By turns painful and joyful, this novella transfixed me.

― Kim Magowan, author of Undoing, The Light Source, and How Far I’ve Come

Available on Amazon.

DACIA PRICE, THIS IS FOR THE NAMING
2022 PROSE CHAPBOOK WINNER

In devoting such generous, yet often-piercing lyric attention to these fractured and brilliant narratives of family and body, Dacia Price’s essays become acts of “re-naming” the so-called stories of our lives. In Price’s world, love, loss, and the heritability thereof are allowed to collide with mice exiled to barren bins of dog food, the inadequacy of psychological manuals, prophetic sparrows and fugitive blueberries. The resulting resonances are unexpected, disarming, and electrically alive.

—Matthew Gavin Frank, author of Flight of the Diamond Smugglers

This is a story about choosing and not-choosing, about white capped singing sparrows and malignant tumors, about the ways we are tethered to the ones we love and to our bodies, and how we split apart. “…[I]n an act of defiance,” writes Dacia Price in This is for the Naming, “I choose neither.” Price spins a gorgeously lyrical web from science, family, and loss, in defiance of the laws of nature, longing for a different ending than the one we all know is inevitable, and driven by that singular human desire: to be seen, to be loved. This is a voice that will buoy you in the darkness.

—Rachel May, author of An American Quilt: Unfolding a Story of Family and Slavery

Available on Amazon.

ANDREW KRIVAK, GHOSTS OF THE MONADNOCK WOLVES
WINNER OF THE 2021 POETRY CHAPBOOK CONTEST

Here in these powerful new poems that make up Ghosts of the Monadnock Wolves, Andrew Krivak presents those haunting, scintillant images he gave us earlier in The Signal Flame and The Bear: A wilderness drumming in the shadows of the Monadnock range, with its unforgiving ice, its Dantesque slopes, and the howl of those ghost wolves and coyotes. In the end, it’s a father’s hope to somehow protect one’s children against those nightmarish forces we know are beyond our control.

—Paul Mariani, author of Crossing Cocytus and The Great Wheel

Andrew Krivak’s collection, Ghosts of the Monadnock Wolves, celebrates the history of a place in the only way that matters – by giving us the people of the place. In “Lake Ice,” there’s a passage that suggests his method of poetic exploration: The narrator and his children stand on a frozen lake and watch the “auger as it turns and searches, turns and searches through each frozen layer, until water so green and cold it looks oily gushes up and settles into slush around our boots.” Krivak’s close eye for the sensory detail grounds all of these poems, and the work reminds me of Harry Humes and the early poems of James Dickey. Reader, get ready to be immersed, get ready to learn what the auger can find.

—Charles Rafferty, author of A Cluster of Noisy Planets

Available on Amazon.

SEIF-ELDEINE, VOICES FROM A FORGOTTEN LETTER
2022 POETRY CHAPBOOK WINNER

A war correspondent of the imagination, Seif-Eldeine documents the Syrian conflict in a relentless present-tense and austere syntax reminiscent of Hemingway or Komunyakaa.  These unforgettable voices speak to us from the kitchens, bars, and curbside jump rope games every bit as embattled as the front lines. What they never do is lecture or hector: “No blackboard, no chalk” begins “The Teacher at the Refugee Camp.” Nor do they censor the manic hilarity that combat can unleash—“the sound of a gun wasn’t it fun fun fun.”  Eyes open to the “malevolent stars” presiding over Syria since 2011, Seif-Eldeine has written a war-torn, necessary book.

—Steven Cramer

Poets write “war poems” for a host of reasons: to witness, to memorialize and commemorate, to celebrate, to lament, to protest, to confront, to make sense, to make war’s abstraction concrete, to document war’s extraordinary realities so they may not otherwise be forgotten. Seif-Eldeine attends to these all with grace, attentiveness, openness of heart, and skill. The result: poems that give back dignity recklessly taken; poems that insist on a new vision of reality, be it of the past, the present, or perhaps most crucially of all, the future.

—Hayan Charara

Available on Amazon.

The first half of Erik Wilbur’s debut chapbook illustrates a young man’s struggle to maintain his relationship with a father who’s battling addiction; the second half illustrates a young man’s struggle to process the grief of losing his father to that addiction. At points, this beautiful, imagistic meditation on acceptance reads like a survival guide for adult children of alcoholics. At points, it’s a testament to poetry’s capacity to conjure comfort and forgiveness during life’s most anxiety-and-resentment-laden moments.

Available on Amazon.