Tanya Holtland’s debut poetry collection, Requisite, opens with a preface that softly urges the importance of spiritual ecology, which seizes my attention immediately. She advocates for the harmony and healing of nature, and caring for the earth as an extension of ourselves. She stages a lyrical political battleground of environmental crisis and the draining of […]
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Cut Woman, from small-press Game Over Books in Boston, is Dena Igusti’s debut collection. Their work is at its best in its play with space. Engaging with the trauma of female genital mutilation, the loss of her people, desire, and patriarchy, Igusti’s poems are varied in form but often united in their modes of fragmentation—apt, […]
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It’s been such a difficult year. As it comes to an end, the VCL team wanted to highlight some of the art, writing, and other things that brought us some joy and comfort this year. Clémence Chouteau, Art Editor 5 Things That Made 2020 Kind Of Okay 1. FUNNY WEATHER: ART IN AN EMERGENCY BY […]
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The VCL team is thrilled to announce our nominations for the 2020 Pushcart Prizes! Creative Nonfiction: – Girls and Other People by L Scully– Homegrown by Iris Yu Poetry: – Reverend K.F. Lord Reveals The Spectre Of Newby Church, 1963 by Cassandra de Alba– Unremembering by Kavi Kshiraj– Cello Concerto in B Minor, Op. 104 by Esther Sun– nightmares […]
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Etel Adnan dispenses down-to-earth wisdom in her poetic work Shifting the Silence, bringing readers along as she recounts her global travels and lessons learned. We are lucky to glimpse her 95 years of life condensed into these pages, and thumb through her thoughts on the passage of life. Hailed as a meditation or rumination on […]
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Your body is a temple; so sayeth the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians. In Boston-poet Levi Cain’s first chapbook Dogteeth, now on its second printing via Ursus Americanus Press, the body is more prismatic: it’s “a house / with newly washed floors,” “a pool to drink from,” or “an apartment / condemned by god.” This […]
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Abolition: A Journal of Insurgent Politics: Call for Art Submissions for a special issue of on Abolitionist Feminisms. “Works accepted for the pages of the journal will be printed in grayscale. Images will be in full color in our online, open-access form. The Abolition Collective is offering artists a modest honorarium of $100 for use […]
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Aditi Machado’s collection Emporium is very timely in its mix of isolation and worldly discovery. As we turn these pages, we follow a merchant who seems at once lost and found on her journey, selling, buying, and trading, and in the end we may be unsure how much has been given up, gained, and what […]
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In times like these, coping with stress and change and seemingly unavoidable hopelessness, David Hanlon’s Spectrum of Flight is a testament to perserverance. His poems outline his strength and growth as he walks us back through his own life, showcasing many moments when he was knocked down and stood up again, a little taller each […]
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Anna Wanda Gogusey‘s work probably looks familiar, because it is everywhere. Her colorful illustrations and the white eyes that makes them so unique adorn everything from advertising campaigns and magazine covers to festival posters and feminist podcasts. Aside from being one of the most successful French illustrators today, working with national and international newspapers such […]
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Aly Pierce’s poetry collection, The Visible Planets, is a work of universal appeal (bad pun absolutely intended). Most people can probably relate to speculation about our place in the world and the cryptic bigger picture outside of our Earth. While many poets focus on the grounding images of humanity in relation to nature, full of […]
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To our readers, The Vagabond City Lit staff stands in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and all those protesting against police brutaality and anti-Black violence. We condemn the police murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Tony McDade as well as the murder of Ahmaud Arbery and the many more Black lives ended […]
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Toxicon and Arachne, the recent poetry collection by Joyelle McSweeney, depicts the short human lifespan with an unconventional consistent darkness. Uniquely refreshing in its morbidity, this work is scattered with the bitterness of losing a child, and McSweeney portrays her grief “the way a crane / dances for its mate / the awkward body / […]
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Meena Alexander has a conversation with literary ghosts in her posthumous poetry collection, In Praise of Fragments. The writings and drawings in this book depict nonlinear, speculative bits about what it means to be alive, present, and home. She invites us on her exploration of the soul in her last few years of life. Many […]
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Emily as Sometimes the Forest Wants the Fire by Darren C. Demaree is exactly the bright, crackling ode that its title suggests. Emily is a dynamic shapeshifter, assuming nature’s many forms, from human to flower to debris. The poems in this collection are certainly heavy with the stumbling navigation of love and vulnerability, but they […]
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To celebrate the end of the year, our team wanted to share some of the things we enjoyed reading most during 2019. Clémence Chouteau, Art Editor: 5 BOOKS I READ IN 2019 THAT I WILL KEEP THINKING ABOUT FOR YEARS 1. THE WATER CURE, SOPHIE MACKINTOSH (2019) “We hold hands very tightly, so we can […]
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Awe-inspiring, thoughtful and honest, Gillian Conoley’s selection of poems in A Little More Red Sun on the Human engages us in observation and conversation about the wild state of the world. Her work encourages analysis of the meaning of our lives as humans, our place in constructed society and forced imposition on nature. The weight […]
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We’re thrilled to announce our nominees for the 2019 Pushcart Prize: El Bahr, El Barh, El Bahr by Leena Aboutaleb Gloria In Excesis Dyke by Levi Cain Distilling Discomfort by Hadiyyah Kuma Mom by Heo Su-gyeong translated by So J. Lee Birthright by Natalie Wee One Day I Will Drink the Whole Sky by Cynthia […]
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Speech, a reflective and well-timed new work by Jill Magi, is quite possibly the delicate walkthrough of life that so many of us secretly wish we had. The speaker serves as a flawlessly observant guide on a linguistic journey, giving us both foresight and hindsight as we wander along a path that is at once […]
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We’re thrilled to announce our nominees for the 2019 Best of the Net anthology. Nonfiction: “Fabric Wound and Unwound” by Tasneem Maher “Fear: A Collage” by Ronny Ford Poetry: “Gaslight” by Christian J. Collier “Yolk” by Cris Iacoponi “On Being Read My Miranda Rights in My Own Hallway”by Linette Reeman “At Beiteddine, Summer 2018” by […]
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Slingshot by Cyrée Jarelle Johnson is a turbulent debut collection that should be on every fall reading list. His poems demonstrate skillful navigation of what it is like to see the world through queer black eyes, opening all other eyes to the alternate visibility and invisibility of this existence, the dangers of being seen by […]
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How would you describe your artistic style? Versace + Arby’s. Tammy Faye Messner + Honey Boo Boo + the Virgin Mary. Key West + Manhattan + the Research Triangle + Hell. Who / what inspires you to create? In terms of who, definitely my partner and my family/friends and other writers/artists I admire. But in […]
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When a home loses its ability to comfort, a person can be left not just searching for a place of safety but also asking what safety really means. Stephen Furlong’s debut chapbook, What Loss Taught Me, approaches such seemingly intractable topics with courage and grace. Taking on experiences of abuse and loss, Furlong shifts adeptly between […]
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Katie: I’ve read What Runs Over a few different ways now– straight through, with pauses, and at random, and it works every which way. The way you work with pace and temper creates this tension that holds a reader and is deeply unsettling throughout. The conversation between pieces, the movement through themes, the return to place and […]
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