BY JOANNA C. VALENTE
Here’s a small peak into what 2020 has in store for us, thanks to these wonderful authors and small/indie presses (and of course, stay tuned for more lists for upcoming books).
Jay Besemer - Theories of Performance (The Lettered Streets Press)
Besemer has been one of my favorite poets for a long time, whose work often focuses on gender, identity, and living with trauma. I was floored with Chelate (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2016). You can read new work by Besemer here:
“i wanted the knife to help define my parameters to offer a type of groundedness or touchstone
i’ve tried to do that—find a touchstone in my body and in space i move through
and even space i love tried to find a touchstone in others friends loved ones”
Adrian Ernesto Cepeda - La Belle Ajar (Clash Books)
Cepeda is an inventive and innovative poet who uses pop culture poignantly. I’m excited for his book to come out this spring. You can check out an excerpt from his book, Between the Spine (Picture Show Press, 2019), here:
“she lives to spin
Cocoon, Flip me over
like your favorite record:
requesting to replay
her Karen O—all night,
can you feel the grooves
on this side? she demands…
I don’t want to feel another sound.”
Jessie Lynn McMains - The Loneliest Show On Earth (Bottlecap Press)
McMains is a powerful poet, whose work gives me chills - and doesn’t shy away from tackling unsettling topics (such as sexuality, gender, and trauma). You can read a new poem here:
“The trying not to move not to exist until she’s sure he’s gone for good. (Until we meet again.) And again. End scene. And cut and cut and cut. She can’t be free until he’s dead or she. She lies awake in the near-pitch room clutches a cleaver to her chest. The door left off its latch an invitation. She dreams a knife-plunge simultaneous. Her death her bridal-day. Ghosts of all the other girls he’s killed will be her honor-maids.”
W. Todd Kaneko - This Is How the Bone Sings (Black Lawrence Press)
Kaneko’s forthcoming book sounds like a true gem, and a must-read. As Kaneko stated on the press’ website, “These poems are about my family’s incarceration at Minidoka, the concentration camp built in Idaho for Japanese Americans during World War II. The sense of shame and degradation surrounding that period is something that many Japanese American families like mine don’t talk about. Yet as much as we didn’t talk about camp, sometimes I feel like camp might really be all we were ever talking about.”
Check out this excerpt (which is so chilling, I love it):
“Tonight, my father sings
…..
no longer, but where there is fire, there is fire.
The heat is my father’s. The smoke is mine.
…..
And when my son looks up at the sky,
he will notice how small everything looks
…..
from far away—a bomb is a flicker of light,
then a flurry of dust, then darkness.”
Candice Wuehle - Death Industrial Complex (Action Books)
The poems in the book are written from the perspective of the photographer Francesca Woodman, a photographer I personally admire and am inspired by. I love persona poems generally and multigenre work. Check out an interview and excerpts here:
“A chant in reverse,
articulate in its reverb
alone. A tonguing: the speech of
feeling. Translation of erotica; limit
experience of looking
at opened lips. Of talking all
the time. vince, no one is going to speak
for me.”
Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. They are the author of Sirs & Madams, The Gods Are Dead, Marys of the Sea, Sexting Ghosts, Xenos, No(body), #Survivor: A Photo Series (forthcoming), and A Love Story (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2021). They are the editor of A Shadow Map: Writing by Survivors of Sexual Assault and the illustrator of Dead Tongue (Yes Poetry, 2020). They received their MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College, and Joanna is the founder of Yes Poetry and the senior managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine.