The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present Poetry Xfit hosted by Shelby Hansen. This generative workshop event will take place on Sunday, August 30th, from 2 to 4 pm EST via Zoom. Join us at the link tiny.utk.edu/poetryxfit.
Poetry Xfit isn’t about throwing tires or heavy ropes, but the idea of confusing our muscles is the same. You will receive ideas, guidelines, and more as part of this generative workshop series in order to complete three poems in two hours. A new set of prompts will be provided after the writers have written collaboratively for thirty minutes. The goal is to create material that can be later modified and transformed into artwork rather than producing flawless final versions. The event is open to prose authors as well!
Shelby Hansen is a creative writer and self-proclaimed fantasy maestro hailing from the northern plains of Texas. She recently graduated from the University of Tennessee’s English program with a focus in Literature and Creative Writing, where she won several awards for her fiction. Her writing often focuses on womanhood, identity, and the reclamation of the self through a speculative lens. This is reflected in her debut novel, which she hopes to publish soon. When she is not writing or teaching today’s youth, she enjoys reading, crocheting, swimming, and spending time with her two cats, Stella and Gemma.
The Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is a writers residency and arts collective that hosts workshops, retreats, and residencies for writers in all genres including poetry, fiction, nonfiction, journalism, academic writing, playwriting, and more.
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “Giving Shape: Retrospection & Projection in Personal Essays,” a workshop led by April Sopkin on Wednesday, August 12th from 6:00-7:30 PM EST. This event will be held over Zoom. Participants can access the event here
When we attempt to reiterate personal experience on the page, we often stick too closely to the facts and forget that the passage of time gives shape to the telling. We create “shape” in many ways, including a unique structure, imagery or sensory repetition, or playing with retrospective parallels. More than that, we forget that personal narrative is also about wonderment, and on the page this can look like an imagined projection of the future: hopes, assumptions, fears, expectations. In other words, the parts of the story that—before this point of arriving at the page—only existed within our hearts and minds.
We’ll use four essay excerpts to study how authors have used retrospection and projection in their work, then we’ll practice those same moves through guided prompts. Students will come away with a new or renewed understanding of specific craft mechanics and new angles to approach their own ideas.
While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, those who are able and appreciative may make donations directly April Sopkin via Venmo @asopkin
April Sopkin writes fiction and personal essays. She was the 2024-25 writer-in-residence at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond, and was awarded a 2023 Elizabeth George Foundation grant to support her in-process short story collection. Her work has appeared in Joyland, MIT Technology Review, Carve, and elsewhere. She was a 2019 Tin House Scholar and has won the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest, the Patricia Aakhus Award, and the TSR Nonfiction Prize. She writes Something Out of Nothing, a regular newsletter about seeking meaning in a multifaceted life.
The Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is a writers residency and arts collective that hosts workshops, retreats, and residencies for writers in all genres including poetry, fiction, nonfiction, journalism, academic writing, playwriting, and more.
This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Merrick Sloane, is from The New Life by Wendy Wisner (Cornerstone Press 2024).
The New Life
Because there is nothing more beautiful than my son running shirtless in the yard, pink chalk streaking his chest, wildflowers squeezed in his sweaty palms—
And because he’s impatient for more cherry blossoms to rain down on his head, he walks over to the tree, flings his arms around it, and shakes—
And because that doesn’t work, he waves me over and says, Make it rain—
And because, I explain to him, the blossoms will only fall when they’re ready, a wind catches, as if it knew—
And because it’s now drizzling ripe cherry blossoms sideways, across my son’s face, his father comes out the side door—
And because his father makes me feel blossomed and possible, I believe for a moment
this is the new life and I can trust it not to hurt me.
Wendy Wisner (she/her) is the author of three books of poems, most recently The New Life, published by Cornerstone Press (University of Wisconsin Stevens-Point) and named a finalist for the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year. Wendy’s poems and essays have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Spoon River Review, Passages North, Verse Daily, The Washington Post, Lilith Magazine, and elsewhere.
Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma. A Best of the Net and AWP Intro Journal Awards Winner, Merrick holds an MFA from UT, Knoxville. Merrick’s work has received support from The DreamYard Project’s Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium and Poet’s House. A 2025 Garden Party Collective Neurodivergence / Intersectionality contest winner, Merrick’s poetry also appears in citizen trans* {project}, ANMLY, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, Fruitslice, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. They are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Merrick writes so that others may feel radically loved and is deeply committed to helping create a world that liberates us all.
This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Merrick Sloane, is from The New Life by Wendy Wisner (Cornerstone Press 2024).
Aftern Newtown
Think of the baby C-curved around your body
in the dark bedroom.
His breath. His hair. Don’t think
of the other rooms— clementines
rotting on the sill, the slowly dying marigolds.
Don’t think of the boy,
once a baby, walking into a room full of children.
See only this: the baby’s hands
crisscrossed in front of his eyes, bones hollow
as a bird’s, little fists jerking
on instinct. Love him. It’s dangerous
to be a baby, a child in this world.
Glory to the goddamn peach fuzz on his head.
Wendy Wisner (she/her) is the author of three books of poems, most recently The New Life, published by Cornerstone Press (University of Wisconsin Stevens-Point) and named a finalist for the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year. Wendy’s poems and essays have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Spoon River Review, Passages North, Verse Daily, The Washington Post, Lilith Magazine, and elsewhere.
Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma. A Best of the Net and AWP Intro Journal Awards Winner, Merrick holds an MFA from UT, Knoxville. Merrick’s work has received support from The DreamYard Project’s Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium and Poet’s House. A 2025 Garden Party Collective Neurodivergence / Intersectionality contest winner, Merrick’s poetry also appears in citizen trans* {project}, ANMLY, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, Fruitslice, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. They are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Merrick writes so that others may feel radically loved and is deeply committed to helping create a world that liberates us all.
This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Merrick Sloane, is from The New Life by Wendy Wisner (Cornerstone Press 2024).
Shedding
Today I stood under the kitchen archway and stepped into my new body. Pasta was on the stove, a cold Tupperware of string beans on the counter. But I knew. I knew I would never be the same— the way I’m certain the magnolia down the block has lost all its petals. I haven’t checked in days, but I’m convinced tomorrow when I take my son to the bus stop, I’ll see them splashed on the sidewalk. What I’m trying to say is sometimes your old skin falls breathlessly off your body in late April, as you slice a cucumber into half moons for your child, and you just stand there and let it.
Wendy Wisner (she/her) is the author of three books of poems, most recently The New Life, published by Cornerstone Press (University of Wisconsin Stevens-Point) and named a finalist for the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year. Wendy’s poems and essays have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Spoon River Review, Passages North, Verse Daily, The Washington Post, Lilith Magazine, and elsewhere.
Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma. A Best of the Net and AWP Intro Journal Awards Winner, Merrick holds an MFA from UT, Knoxville. Merrick’s work has received support from The DreamYard Project’s Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium and Poet’s House. A 2025 Garden Party Collective Neurodivergence / Intersectionality contest winner, Merrick’s poetry also appears in citizen trans* {project}, ANMLY, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, Fruitslice, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. They are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Merrick writes so that others may feel radically loved and is deeply committed to helping create a world that liberates us all.
This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Merrick Sloane, is from The New Life by Wendy Wisner (Cornerstone Press 2024).
Content Warning: infant death
Milk
We sit on the bed. She lifts her shirt, skin ashen and damp, stomach concave. She hasn’t eaten in days. But there’s milk. She squeezes it out like I showed her when her daughter was alive. Fat, glistening drops. Am I doing it right? she asks. If milk is coming out, you’re doing it right. It’s what I said when her daughter was here, her warm, sleepy cheek against her mother’s breasts while we hand- expressed milk into her tiny mouth. As I’m leaving, she fingers the red threads of an Elmo doll lying on the coffee table among baby pictures and glasses of water. I tell her I remember that her daughter loved Elmo. She asks if I would like a sandwich. She says, We have so much food.
Wendy Wisner (she/her) is the author of three books of poems, most recently The New Life, published by Cornerstone Press (University of Wisconsin Stevens-Point) and named a finalist for the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year. Wendy’s poems and essays have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Spoon River Review, Passages North, Verse Daily, The Washington Post, Lilith Magazine, and elsewhere.
Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma. A Best of the Net and AWP Intro Journal Awards Winner, Merrick holds an MFA from UT, Knoxville. Merrick’s work has received support from The DreamYard Project’s Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium and Poet’s House. A 2025 Garden Party Collective Neurodivergence / Intersectionality contest winner, Merrick’s poetry also appears in citizen trans* {project}, ANMLY, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, Fruitslice, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. They are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Merrick writes so that others may feel radically loved and is deeply committed to helping create a world that liberates us all.
This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Merrick Sloane, is from The New Life by Wendy Wisner (Cornerstone Press 2024).
Solstice
My mother was born on the first day of summer, 1948. Her mother labored alone. Ivy flared against the window shot through with lemon light. That night, the moon was full as it is tonight. In the waiting room, her father sat in his gray clothes holding his son, Raphael, the angel. When the moon dropped, the nurse let them in. My mother’s eyes were root black, still adjusting to the light. Raphael named her Black-Eyed Susan. This was the beginning. Later, the steady unraveling of a family— the way a girl’s hair unbraids in her sleep, end of summer, her pillow damp. Tonight I’m not interested in that story. My hair is down. Summer’s just begun. I want only this: to see my mother born.
Wendy Wisner (she/her) is the author of three books of poems, most recently The New Life, published by Cornerstone Press (University of Wisconsin Stevens-Point) and named a finalist for the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year. Wendy’s poems and essays have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Spoon River Review, Passages North, Verse Daily, The Washington Post, Lilith Magazine, and elsewhere.
Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma. A Best of the Net and AWP Intro Journal Awards Winner, Merrick holds an MFA from UT, Knoxville. Merrick’s work has received support from The DreamYard Project’s Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium and Poet’s House. A 2025 Garden Party Collective Neurodivergence / Intersectionality contest winner, Merrick’s poetry also appears in citizen trans* {project}, ANMLY, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, Fruitslice, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. They are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Merrick writes so that others may feel radically loved and is deeply committed to helping create a world that liberates us all.
This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Merrick Sloane, is from These Aren’t My Woods Anymore by Soon Jones (Poetose Press 2025).
Cosmopolitan Skylines
There’s something about a shot of Jose Cuervo that says you’re a city girl now, sophisticated, lime smile with salt on your tongue. Not
a redneck with a farmer’s tan from, wouldn’t you know it, farming, long jeans covering the fire ant bites on your calves.
Your clothes are clean and starched, fitted to your body, no illustrated marlin
leaping from the Atlantic imprinted on threadbare fabric hanging from your shoulders.
You ran a toothpick under your short nails, dug out lines of dirt, plucked splinters and eyebrows alike.
Scrubbed the earth from your knuckles, the leaves from your hair, the smell of moss flushed from your skin.
A cigarette in your left hand, a martini in your right— even though you hate olives
—so metropolitan. As long as you don’t let slip out a y’all, how would anyone know
you’re daydreaming about log cabins so deep in the woods the light pollution can’t reach?
All those adolescent years wishing you’d make it out of the country, and now all you want
is to return. This time on your own terms. This time you won’t be chased
down your street by your neighbors for being the wrong race, the wrong sexuality, the wrong kind of not-girl, pick one—
—these lies you tell yourself, painting over years of terror and a revolver tucked in your waistband for protection
with a fresh coat of foundation, concealer, staining your lips shiny and pink. A city girl
has no need for pocketknives and snake bite kits. You can be out here, and no one cares. But god,
if only you could get back to those trees, clear, cold rivers with muddy banks, night birds piercing through your walls.
Soon Jones (they/them) is a Korean-American lesbian poet and writer raised in the rural countryside of the American South. They are a Lambda Literary Fellow with an MFA from Oklahoma State University. Their work has appeared in Sinister Wisdom, Denver Quarterly, Lunch Ticket, Moon City Review, and others, and their debut collection, These Aren’t My Woods Anymore, is out now from Poetose Press. When not writing poems or working on cars, you can find Soon going on long walks through nature or stargazing.
Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma. A Best of the Net and AWP Intro Journal Awards Winner, Merrick holds an MFA from UT, Knoxville. Merrick’s work has received support from The DreamYard Project’s Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium and Poet’s House. A 2025 Garden Party Collective Neurodivergence / Intersectionality contest winner, Merrick’s poetry also appears in citizen trans* {project}, ANMLY, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, Fruitslice, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. They are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Merrick writes so that others may feel radically loved and is deeply committed to helping create a world that liberates us all.
This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Merrick Sloane, is from These Aren’t My Woods Anymore by Soon Jones (Poetose Press 2025).
Final Rites
my faith evaporated with the steam rising out from the lake at dawn when I touched the shell of my mother and there was nothing left of her. That morning, I learned prayers don’t go past the ceiling: they fall back into the maggots
suffocating in the coffin beside my mother. wood, flesh, fly husks, her cotton floral dress churns back into the earth, and bubbles up as grass, wildflowers, nitrogen in the soil singing rebirth
until the sun engorges herself and swallows our little blue home, until we join the chorus of stars becoming and unbecoming, our traumas compressed
so deep down anyone could mistake us for black holes who were never here at all.
Soon Jones (they/them) is a Korean-American lesbian poet and writer raised in the rural countryside of the American South. They are a Lambda Literary Fellow with an MFA from Oklahoma State University. Their work has appeared in Sinister Wisdom, Denver Quarterly, Lunch Ticket, Moon City Review, and others, and their debut collection, These Aren’t My Woods Anymore, is out now from Poetose Press. When not writing poems or working on cars, you can find Soon going on long walks through nature or stargazing.
Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma. A Best of the Net and AWP Intro Journal Awards Winner, Merrick holds an MFA from UT, Knoxville. Merrick’s work has received support from The DreamYard Project’s Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium and Poet’s House. A 2025 Garden Party Collective Neurodivergence / Intersectionality contest winner, Merrick’s poetry also appears in citizen trans* {project}, ANMLY, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, Fruitslice, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. They are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Merrick writes so that others may feel radically loved and is deeply committed to helping create a world that liberates us all.
This month we had the honor to speak to Brooklyn-based poet and musician Elizabeth Devlin about her poetry collection Milk Spine(Dancing Girl Press & Studio, 2024). Her writing is visceral, rhythmic, sinuous. It’ll prick your palm then crawl inside your ear and get stuck in your head—in a good way! The poems reward multiple reads, and like a great song on a newly discovered playlist, they inspire you to keep hitting play, to keep going back and reveling in the anticipation of that one perfect hook. When everything comes together, the whole thing just clicks! Devlin has that in spades, and it was a treat to get to pick her brain about her process and the intersection of poetry and music.
Ada Wofford: The collection opens with “Milk Fat,” which begins, “For three years, I stopped living, / so I could give life.” This is such a powerful opening. On the one hand, it seems to pit living as something against giving, but one could also see giving as living; that they are two sides of the same coin. Can you speak about how you view the relationship between giving and living and why you chose to open the collection with this observation?
Elizabeth Devlin: “For three years, I stopped living, / so I could give life,” is a reference to the sacrifices one makes when choosing to become a conscientious parent. There is a dissolution of self, and ego, in service of one’s progeny. I agree that giving is an attribute of living; some of the most rewarding things I have done in my life came from positioning myself in a role of service. But what that line specifically refers to is the devotion required of parenthood; there is little freedom, autonomy or sense of self, once one chooses to be a good parent, especially at the beginning. Parenting a newborn is challenging but is also an exhilarating and powerful act of service, selflessness and love.
AW: In “Up/Pick Me,” you work in a call and response pattern that depicts what a woman is or needs versus what she gets, how she is perceived, “I am in need of religion/It must be a sin to look that fine.” The writer Anne Lamott once quoted a friend of hers as saying, “You’re not a body having a spiritual experience, you’re a spirit having a body experience.” On the surface, the poem is about sexism, but that sexism is rooted in the denial of the spirit (or inner self) via seeing the body as an object. Can you speak about this idea of spirit or inner self versus the corporeal, and how poetry might function as a conduit between the two?
ED: Most days, I feel like a moderately evolved ball of nerves, bouncing from one sensation to the next, hiccupping through a series of physiological and chaotic responses to internal and external stimuli. My poetry lives, and finds color and smell, in the awareness of my corporeal self. Whether I am appreciating my body or not; I have never been able to dissever the two. I do not believe I have a “soul,” nor do I subscribe to any religiosity that purports humans possess an essence separate from the body that is exclusive to us or other sentient beings, or the byproduct of being the chosen progeny of an all knowing, omnipresent being god/goddess. I do not believe there is another plane on which people exist after they die, where individuals will be divvied out their punishments or prizes. I believe that this life is it.
So, when you ask me to speak about this idea of spirit or inner self versus the corporeal, and how poetry might function as a conduit between the two, I am at a loss. We are made of stars, and no energy is created or destroyed. Considering this, I could not separate my corporal form from a literal or metaphorical idea of soul. They are interlinked bedfellows. This all said, I do feel there are things we have yet to understand, or define, and I identify these things as metaphysical, and some may consider that an indication of “spirit/soul.” I love the idea of having a soul because it allows me to contemplate fanciful things and exist in the realm of woo.
AW: You write with a lot of rhythm and rhyme (I didn’t realize until I finished the book and read your bio that you are also a musician), “relative to the / rickety-racket, / bury-that-hatchet,” and in another, “but I love you like a sister / or a brother, / from another mother, / with your free, Whitehall condoms, / cell-phone-bling, pawn-that-ring brokers / and the elevated rittle-rattle.” This produces musicality in the poems that I find quite refreshing. Can you speak about these elements and what they mean to you as a poet?
ED: Humor and play are very important to me, in life, and in poetry. I am so pleased that you received these lines in this way; thank you for sharing your reflections. The musicality of the world is undeniable. I hear melodic voices in all things; poetry is just another instrument, or vehicle, through which we may construct songs. Alliteration, onomatopoeia, the flow, verbiage and syntax, and how beats and syllables flow from the mouth when read aloud, this is where the fun lies. Whenever I write, I am always reading out loud, to hear that rhythm and ensure its presence.
AW: To build on this (and if you’ve already answered this, then just ignore), written poetry is inherently a visible medium while music is not. How do you think of poetry as something visual and what can the page accomplish that sound can’t?
ED: Sound is visual to me, in that, it induces literal visual responses, which can cast my sight in shades of color and feeling. I do not have chromesthesia, but sound does change my sight and the way I perceive shape and color, so, in this way, when I hear poetry read aloud, particularly lyrical poetry, the sound does have a visual effect. I put great consideration into how words appear on the page, as well; format and line breaks, and the play that can exist within, allow poetry to have visual impact outside of the sound. Both things are important.
AW: I’m very curious about the title of the collection, it conjures in my mind a spine molded out of curdled milk, seemingly solid but viscous the moment you touch it. Can you speak about your inspiration and why you chose the title Milk Spine?
ED: I love this; “it conjures in my mind a spine molded out of curdled milk” is right on point. Milk Spine was a reference to being a milk producing mammal and how my life was ruled by the hunger of my child’s need to suckle. It’s also a playful way of referring to the spine of a book. The book’s spine and the spine of the body, give structure, definition, support, and much of what is spoken about in this manuscript, is about the corporeal body, organs, spine, blood, fat, so the title was a reference to that, as well. Breastfeeding is such an animalistic, ecstatic and sensual ritual. It bonds mother to child in a parasitic way that is emphatically welcomed by both participants. There are some mutual benefits to breast feeding but, at times, I also felt I was submitting fully to this being I had created. The poem “Letdown” addresses the complexity of this relationship in detail. I have never felt so simultaneously powerful and helpless, as when I was breastfeeding. The mammary imagery does include images of curdling, and I hope that the narrative of a failed relationship is illustrated by that. The milk, and the romantic love, outside of the mother/baby relationship, is sweet and fatty and life giving, until it is not.
AW: The concept of religion and spirituality appear throughout the collection, though sometimes in contradictory ways; in “Flushing Ave,” you write, “if there was still religion / lifting these two boot souls to God, / But there isn’t.” Later in the collection, you have a poem titled, “Church of the Orishas: A mother’s prayers: after Psalm 143:1” in which you write, “OH GODDESS, hear my prayer, / Give ear unto my supplications, / In Thy faithfulness answer me—in Thy righteousness.” I’m going to leave this as broad as I can because I know this is such a complex topic to discuss, but if you’re comfortable, can you talk about what religion and/or spirituality means to you as a poet? And if you’d like to speak about the specific poems I quoted, please do.
ED: I was raised in strict, patriarchal religiosity; it was the source of a great deal of confusion and oppression in my childhood and catharsis in my adult life. Harkening back to your previous question about spirit, while I do not subscribe to a particular faith or religion, and do emphatically believe that what we have in this life is what we get, and nothing more, I do think there are undefined components of our existence which elude us, and so we refer to these things as magic and/or spirituality. Within this abstract understanding of the word spirituality, as a metaphysical human contemplation, I do feel greatly influenced by that which I feel, and believe I am acting within, but for which I do not have a name or defined understanding. It all feels intuitive, as life, and language, and song, and verse, feel intuitive. I enjoy playing with the idea, that, if there is a god, she is woman, and in direct opposition to that which confined me in my upbringing. Since nature, evolution, reproduction and life, feel inherently feminine to me, when giving a voice, description and narrative to an omniscient being, I want her to be female identifying. In “Church of the Orishas: A mother’s prayer,” I chose to juxtapose these narratives. Yemaya is a goddess in, and with whom, I can identify and have faith in. She is relatable and invokes faith in me; utilizing her to relay my personal narrative as a young mother, allows space for womanhood, and a sense of peace and strength, that was not present, or considered, in the religion of my childhood.
AW: In “Letting Go is Hard,” you write, “I’m not a person / but a place, a thing.” Is this echoing the type of objectification discussed in “Up/Pick Me” or is this touching on a different form of dehumanization/alienation? And if so, in what way?
ED: Yes, this is certainly echoing the same type of objectification that we discussed in “Pick Me Up.” When I wrote these poems, I was joyfully and painfully aware of how my physical body both elevated and inhibited my experiences. I appreciate you picking up on this and connecting these contradictions. Many of the poems in MS are struggling with this same contemplation and trying to make sense of the narrator’s personhood and concept of self.
AW: You have such a knack for association that it makes not quoting you at length difficult but there’s a great section in “As Things Developed She Was to Have All Manner of Revelation” that I’d love to ask you about. “Leaning on an enlightened pillar / of debt and obligation, / there is no catharsis / in communism, / or Christ in capitalism, / just a solo communion, / Yeezus and / I AM GOD (DESS).” There is so, so much happening in such a small space. I took it to be an exploration (or fever dream) of spiritual hunger; one goes to higher education (“enlightened pillar”) to expand their horizons, only to be fed a bunch of corporate speak and rubrics, spit into a society that cares only about the material, and with celebrities as the only thing resembling something like a divine figure for us to worship. Can you speak about this poem and is this interpretation anything like what you were going for?
ED: Oh my god, what you wrote here is so on point and beautiful and full of understanding. Thank you so very much for giving my work such generous and insightful consideration. I appreciate you and yes, yes, yes to everything you said; I have nothing to add.
AW: And to follow up, can you speak about your use of association in your poems, making one line suddenly change meaning by its context with the next line and what you enjoy about this close-knit style of writing?
ED: Are you referring to enjambment and the line breaks?
AW: Yes, I am.
ED: I have a close friend, Barbara Schwartz, with whom I have been in a poetry writing group for over eleven years now, and she is the queen of enjambment! She has taught me the power and playfulness of leaning into this poetry mechanism, to keep the reader on their toes! It is part of my poetic playfulness. When the question, the conflict, the contemplation, the meaning, the understanding can change abruptly, from one line to the next, that is exciting!
AW: And lastly, is there anything else you’d like to talk about? Any new projects, albums, collections?
ED: I currently have a full-length MS that I am sending out to publishers. I have also been sitting on a full-length, recorded and mastered, album that I am going to release in the future. My personal life has presented some extreme challenges in the last year that have left my professional life in shambles. So, there are many things cooking but, without trying to sound trite, I really have no idea what the future holds, currently.
Elizabeth Devlin is a visual artist, poet, singer and multi-instrumentalist. Her debut poetry chapbook, Milk Spine, was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2025. Her art and poetry have appeared in Cobramilk Issue 2, The Opiate, Bomb Magazine, We the Tender Hearted and elsewhere. Elizabeth is a three time recipient of the Writers Residency, at Firefly Farms, through Sundress Academy, Knoxville, TN. Between 2017-2021, she was the curator and Founding Director of Bessie’s Brooklyn, a private art salon, which hosted numerous art, music, and literary events including: The Highwaymen NYC, pRose By Any Other, The POETrap and Token Folk Acoustic
Devlin has toured internationally for close to two decades. An autoharpist/singer-songwriter with avant-garde-folk sensibilities, she defies traditional song structures, weaving small worlds where magic and fantasies collide. Elizabeth’s third full-length album, Orchid Mantis (2017), received 4.5/5 from Impose Magazine and was the follow-up to the previously released albums: For Whom the Angels Named (2011), Ladybug (2011) and All Are Relative (2009). In Fall 2021, Devlin released her fourth album, Conscientious Objector (What A Mess! Records, FR). Devlin continues to tour and will release her fifth full-length album, My Father’s Country, in 2026. Elizabeth can be found in Brooklyn, living with her large family, loving on a ridiculously hairy dog, gardening and sipping a Thai iced Bubble tea, or, at elizabethdevlinmusic.com.
Ada Wofford (they/them) holds MAs in both English and Library Studies. In addition to working at a rare book shop, they are an associate poetry editor at Sundress Publications, the editor of We Call Upon the Author to Explain, and the non-fiction editor at Stirring: A Literary Collection. Their writing has appeared in The Blue Nib, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Autostraddle, Capable Magazine, Sundress Reads, and more. Their chapbook, I Remember Learning How to Dive, was published in 2020, part of which earned them a Pushcart Prize nomination.
