I began keeping a journal in the summer of 2022. Fifty three years prior to that event, Joan Didion wrote that “Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.” Is this true now, when all the world seems no longer a stage, but rather billions of public digital diaries, pulsing and flashing across our collective vision? Does this make all of us “anxious malcontents”? Probably. I like reading other people’s diaries. I am interested in them. I am interested in writing and privacy and publicity; I am interested in knowledge and its dissemination.
In my work, I have argued that the fields of literature and history are inseparable – indeed, that they are one and the same. All history is a work of fiction; all nonfiction works of history. In this way, we understand ourselves.
I read constantly about the past. I read constantly. I understand myself through that material. Mark Kurlansky and Lilian Faderman convinced me to study history when I read their books on my A Train commute to high school. Wandering through Dublin in 2023, I spent hours on park benches reading the works of David Foster Wallace. Crying inconsolably in the woods of Vermont, I finished Elif Batuman’s The Idiot and Either/Or. Sally Rooney’s Conversations With Friends was near biblical to me during my sophomore year of college – I would carry my annotated copy in my bag at all times, turning to a page at random and consulting when needed with my liturgy. The year prior, I had done the same with Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Reading Jeffrey Eugenides’ novels on Brown’s quad my senior year was a twisted revelation. Driving across the country, my companion and I took turns reading aloud from Carrie Brownstein’s memoir, Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl, which I finished alone on the floor of a motel bathroom. This is not a reading list so much as an autobiography.
In the college library, I taped photos of my favorite historians to the wall above my desk. I dressed as historian Hayden White for a costume party. It seems, at times, I am incapable of undergoing a conversation without invoking my personal pantheon of feminist scholars: Andrea Dworkin, Amia Srinivasan, Andrea Long Chu, Silvia Federici. Their intellect sparks against me. I simmer in pretension. My friends laugh at the way I speak through a web of references, often inscrutably so. I write notes on what I read in my journal, beside pasted-in receipts and postcards. I draw pictures of Mo from Alison Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For to keep the ephemera company, speech bubbles with snarky commentary hanging from her mouth. I draw, write, collage, and the forms and media blend and blur.
I like it, my diary. I like to read history and fiction and poetry, which is to say, other people’s diaries. I like works which are expansive, experimental, interdisciplinary, multimedia. I am excited to read your work, so you should let me read it. I am a good reader – I pride myself on it. I am in search of something, as are all of us who read (perhaps there’s a joke about Proust to be made here, but I’ll leave it to the experts). I am inexpert and excited. I am happy to be here. I am balancing a book on my head.
Lia Ortner (she/her) earned her BA in History and Comparative Literature from Brown University in 2025, with her thesis on Medieval literature being granted the John A. Thomas Memorial Award. For the past year, she has been in Athens, Greece on a fellowship with the American College of Greece. Originally from Brooklyn, New York, Lia is an educator, historian, killjoy feminist, amateur semiologist, and collage enthusiast. She enjoys drinking coffee in bed.
Following the release of Kimberly Ann Priest’s full-length poetry collection, Floralia, Tara Rahman spoke with Priest about the collection’s botanical language, hybrid forms, and haunting representations of trauma, survival, and embodiment. Here, they discussed the use of flowers as both medicinal and poisonous symbols, the fragmented formal structures through which grief and dissociation are articulated, and the collection’s intersectional attention to gender-based violence, media spectacle, power, and the difficult work of healing.
Tara Rahman: What is the significance of the recurring botanical terminology (i.e., plant classifications or taxonomy) and rare or toxic flowers in Floralia, such as the poppy and impatiens psittacina (parrot flower)?
Kimberly Ann Priest: Spending time in nature has always been, for me, a balm. I go to nature for refuge. I bring it into my living spaces for solace. I love to have flowers in my home. But nature, in all its expressions, is not a simple metaphor for beauty and good. Nature is fierce, dangerous, and poisonous, while also being tender, vibrant, and medicinal. The flowers in Floralia expose their many personalities. The opium poppy, for instance, “can be dried and used for decorations, boiled in water to produce a bitter tea, or crushed to make a low dose of morphinans.” It is also the source of an illicit drug: opium. Asks the speaker as the primary narrator of the book: “How does one classify a thing useful either living or dead? Useful for both good and ill purposes?” (67). My answer: I don’t know. We are speaking of humans, of course. How each of us make choices to do harm or heal, to do evil or good, and, of course, the gamut of choices in between these poles. How do you classify us? We can’t be pinned down to all bad or all good. We are people living in the throes of others’ choices and absorbing the consequences of those choices ,and this fact alters where we exist on the spectrum of classifications day by day. What I am communicating with these flowers is our worth and the importance of honoring that worth—to not crush, discard, or abuse it. I’m communicating the power of choice and our ability to choose to treat these fragile blooms with absolute respect, tending to their purpose as testimonies of what is beautiful, desirable, and medicinal.
TR: The poems throughout Floralia experiment with various forms and structures, including sedoka, monologue, and prose. How does form influence the articulation of grief in these poems, such as “Red-Coral Like a Woman’s Painted Lips” and “City Lights Radio Presents Floralia”?
KAP: Gosh, grief is so incredibly disruptive. It’s not linear or organized. It makes its own decisions about how it will enter our memories and our days. This is especially true with grief from a traumatic experience. The poems in Floralia speak to the fragmentation an individual experiences after trauma and how it disrupts mental processing, emotional regulation, and relational attachment. When writing trauma—not as a narrative fact but as an embodied experience—hybridity typically provides more room for formal play that mimics this experience. With the “City Lights Radio” broadcast, I wanted to show the way sexual trauma splits the mind, fragmenting memory, and how this dissociation can feel like you exist in a body of multiple interpretations of the self. I’m not speaking of a personality disorder, but rather the struggle to integrate identity after what you believed about the world and the self in the world has been shattered by a traumatic experience that challenges your belief. In the sedoka poem, there is a single voice lamenting the fresh wound of assault. That fresh wound is not easy to communicate if one can communicate at all, so the expression is sound and color and metaphors based on feeling as the speaker is trying to connect these expressions in a way that makes some sense. It’s supposed to feel a bit senseless while also being driven by identifiable emotion at intervals.
TR: How do blank spaces and brackets serve as a tool for communicating the complex, often inarticulable experience of sexual abuse in Floralia? In addition, how are these devices a vehicle for reinforcing the motifs of silence and repressed feelings (e.g., guilt, shame, fear) in your collection?
KAP: I think the question answered the question! The blank spaces and brackets are meant to communicate emotional disruption and dysregulation. Reading these poems isn’t a fluid experience. Guilt, shame, fear, grief—it’s all heavy, jarring, overwhelming then numbing. These emotions cycle. They stop and go. They expand and collapse. They can feel illuminating then suddenly spar. So, also the poems in Floralia.
TR: In “City Lights Radio Presents Floralia,” the Alive Young Woman tells the Ghost Woman, “…You may not remember the situation of your death…but your disembodied self still carries the trauma of the events.” In “ghosts,” the speaker states, “It has taken me a long time to realize I am human…I give details about how the past intrudes into the present and how this is scar tissue in my bone and in my veins…” What role does memory, embodied trauma, and dissociation play in the speaker’s relationship to her body?
KAP: It’s everything. This is sort of the question of the whole book: what role do these experiences play after trauma? I think my answer to this question is multi-faceted. Working through this dissociation, painful memories, and how trauma lives in the body (as does the women in the prose poems that head each section) is what allows us to survive these traumas. So many people don’t work through, so they continue to manifest harm to the self and others. But many also do work through and, as a product of working through, become wise. They extract medicine from the pain and offer this medicine to others. I hope that this is the enduring legacy of my own work, that all these poems I’ve written in Floralia and other books provide a roadmap for others to travel who also require healing from painful traumas. I don’t think I answered your question directly, perhaps because it is difficult for me to separate what we might consider the body and soul and all the things that fracture the soul. The body holds this fracture. It is the container. Trauma moves through the veins, rewires the brain, and physically manifests the pain we carry in our spiritual parts. It’s all one. To care for any part of the human is to care for all parts.
TR: Tell me more about your choice of language and syntax in the linked sedoka poem, “Red-Coral Like a Woman’s Painted Lips,” such as the repetition of “his body, not mine” and rhythmic enjambment (e.g., lines “…good blood drum be good / little orange-beat-beat-good-should…”).
KAP: This poem is an attempt for a freshly assaulted woman to make sense of her experience. I imagine this as an internal dialogue that doesn’t make clear sense. Her repeated attempts to clarify distinction of bodies is a desperate attempt to place a separation between herself and her assailant. But the poem communicates a lot of sound and color as you have noted, that feeling of trauma throbbing in the veins. She can’t make sense of everything. The body is overwhelmed with feeling. The mind moves in and out of reality.
TR: In “His mother”, the speaker states: “…after he slipped / into the room to feel her soft nourishing breasts and be her / little white begonia three more times…” How does this poem complicate attitudes toward gender and survivors of sexual abuse? How does the portrayal of the mother figure as “nourishing” subvert these expectations (and the expectations of relationships between abuse survivors and perpetrators)?
KAP: This poem and elements of Parrot Flower was inspired by the story of a man who became a serial rapist. His early childhood was marked by intense trauma: his mother sexually abused him repeatedly. Culturally, we cannot escape the reality that women and girls are more frequently sexually harassed and abused at the hands of men, but boys are abused, too. Typically, they are also abused by men, but in the story I was examining, this boy (who became a rapist) was abused by his mother. Naturally, this shaped his psyche and corrupted his desire. The cultural narrative that we live inside, in our case a patriarchal narrative, determines which gender is freer to perpetrate harm without consequence. Here in America, men are freer to perpetrate harm, and they are more beholden to maintain the power balance that patriarchy demands. This maintenance can be so subconscious, with all of us participating in major and minor ways and not even realizing we are doing so. But I think it’s important to contemplate our origins—we were all small children once. We were all poised for any possibility. Both boys and girls are recipients of cultural narratives and whatever harms they embody. While I don’t think we will ever live in a world where these harms completely discontinue, I wonder how much good it would do each of us to contemplate the fragile genesis of every person we meet and how we can tend this genesis with greater wisdom and care. For Brent Brents, the serial rapist, the power and control dynamic of using women was also his source of nourishing himself. He needed to both hurt his mother for abusing him and receive her sexual/emotional tending. How devastating is that? And how devasting the choices he made to perpetuate this harmful narrative. But like all of us, and like Parrot Flower demonstrates, he did have a choice.
TR: Another line in “His mother” that I’d like you to speak more on is, “…he extinguished his cigarette on her twiggy arms—that’s what young boys do—then left.” What are you hoping to have readers contend with in this last statement?
KAP: Simply the power and control narrative that men are often introduced to from a young age that positions them as the ones entitled to have power over another. This power narrative, sadly, usually manifests most clearly in their relationships to intimate partners even if it doesn’t to the rest of their social circle. And this power dynamic is a form of coping. Culturally, we have often invited boys and men to cope with their pain through bullying—typically bullying their intimate partner or other people, like children, who are dependent on them for survival. Men, more than anyone, need to change this narrative by doing deep inner healing themselves and teaching boys that power and control tactics are not an alternative to doing the work of healing their wounds. Culturally, we do possess better medicine. It’s available. Men and boys can engage with this medicine, too.
TR: In “City Lights Radio Presents Floralia”, the Male Announcer refers to the media phenomenon of “Missing White Woman Syndrome” in his dialogue, stating: “Telegenic, photogenic, the young woman memorialized in the center photo was… the most ideal progenitor of terror in the American imagination…” and that “It [e.g., sexual abuse, kidnapping, murder] could be any girl, any white girl—a pretty one.” Speak about the need for an intersectional lens in better understanding and calling attention to the issues of gender-based violence, exploitation, and drug addiction.
KAP: In this piece, I’m highlighting the voyeuring aspect of news media in relation to stories of sexual harm against women and how, culturally, white women are the focus of media attention to the dismissal of crimes done against women of color and even boys. In highlighting this, I am not saying that this is beneficial to white women. I am revealing a cultural obsession. This obsession is not beneficial to anyone because it is not about care and concern for women of any color, including white women. It is more about what provides good entertainment in media and will capture the minds of viewers. There are certainly other lenses we could consider; for instance, the fact that those with wealth receive more positive media attention than those in poverty. The point is that news media and other medias are agenda-driven, needing viewers and ratings that translate to dollars to survive, and this media agenda manifests as incomplete or one-sided information about the world we live in. It also encourages us to observe the world from an easy distance on a screen and perhaps miss the stories and needs of the people around us. I don’t know how to solve this dilemma. It is likely unsolvable. I do my best to avoid news media, not to be avoidant of happenings in the world, but rather to focus my attention on research that expands my worldview as well as the stories of individual people in my community that need direct care. Not an easy thing to do in the present historical moment.
TR: In “On bluelight.org,” the speaker observes: “People do you know. [Survive.] Mostly women.” How does this (often disproportionately) precarious struggle of women to survive, especially from marginalized backgrounds related to race and class, intersect with your own views and reflections on survival throughout the collection?
KAP: I think it’s just that—the fact that survival is disproportionate. We can pretend it’s not, but it is. And its disproportionate in a variety of ways. It’s not a simple narrative of straight white men having more power than anyone else. It’s also a story of which straight white men have this right and who they are willing to share power with at any given time. Money matters. Fame matters. Family background matters. Religious affiliation matters, etc. But the fact that any of these elements matter when it comes to who survives and maintains control is the problem at the heart of all of this. Perhaps our lingering questions should not be centered on what intersectional elements place a person at the bottom of society with little hope of survival, but what intersects to place someone at the top? And when someone finds themselves at the top, how can they quickly begin to disseminate and relinquish this strong hold on exceptional power? What can they give up? What can I give up when I have too much right to power? This is the ultimate question. The poem you refer to is simply referring to the fact that, in the narrative of gender, women are more often caught in the throes of survival than men, doing more work to maybe someday enjoy thriving.
TR: You open each key poem (“City Lights Radio Presents Floralia”, “Parrot Flower”, and “Red-Coral Like a Woman’s Painted Lips”) with epitaphs quoted from other poetic works, including Kimiko Hahn’s “Toxic Flora”, Song of Songs in the Holy Bible, and Patti Smith’s poem “rape.” Why did you choose them? How are they significant to the larger narrative of the collection? What should the readers take away from these epitaphs?
KAP: In this collection, each epitaph is setting up the drama that will unfold in the next section. Firstly, I love the book Toxic Flora, the poem that is Song of Songs has informed so much of my worldview about desire, pleasure, and the dedicated fierceness of love, and anything Patti Smith writes is an education in excellent writing craft. Altogether, the lines I chose from these writings highlight our fragile natures, how we can be broken and discarded, altered by toxicity, and filled with questions about how we will be seen and understood after harm. They resonate with Who am I now? and How do you see me? I have carried these questions myself, hence all the poetry to unravel my own stories of harm and what these harms communicate to me about my value in the world. As the woman classifying flowers in this book dedicates herself to discovering the medicinal wisdom of her experiences, however painful this excavation may be, I hope my reader will understand that these fragile blooms are worth tender cultivation. If they have been damaged, they are no less worthy, but cultivation is not all about gentle caresses and sunlight, it also requires eradication of toxins and predators, PH balance and good soil. The work is difficult, intentional, and takes time, but in the end, you will have welcomed and restored a beautiful bloom.
Kimberly Ann Priest is a writer, visual artist, and author of Wolves in Shells, winner of the 2024 Backwaters Prize in Poetry, as well as tether & lung (Texas Review Press) and Slaughter the One Bird (Sundress Publications). An assistant professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures at Michigan State University, her writing is deeply focused on gender-based trauma, domestic ecologies, eco-poetics, eco-spirituality, ecofeminism, women’s studies, neurodivergence studies, classic film studies, narrative justice, arts-based research, and writing for therapeutic purposes. Her poetry has appeared in literary journals such as Copper Nickel, Poetry Wales, Prairie Schooner, and Birmingham Poetry Review.
Tara Rahman (she/her) is a Sundress editorial intern with a BA in English Language and Literature from Smith College and an MSc in Global Development from SOAS, University of London. She is also a recent graduate of the Columbia Publishing Course in Oxford, UK. With a strong interest in culture, identity, and global history, her personal writing often focuses on intersectionality and the untold stories and experiences of marginalized communities. In her free time, she enjoys reading literary and YA fiction, watching anime, and spending time with her tripod cat, Tuntuni.
The reasons I read poetry are so numerous, and each of them so meaningful that explaining them all would probably take a lifetime. For the purposes of this review, I’ll mention one: to have ordinary human experience transmuted into something that feels new, revelatory, and even magical. Which brings me to the poetry collection Her Mouth a Palace of Lamps (Milk & Cake Press, 2025) by Yamini Pathak. This book contains some of the most dazzling poetry I have ever read, bar none.
Each of the book’s sections is named after an element of a raga, which is a melodic framework for improvisation in Indian classical music. More than just a piece of music theory, the word “raga” itself in Sanskrit is related to color, to dyeing, and the soul. That is the essential mission of a raga: to evoke a particular emotional state in the listener, to color the soul and the mind, if you will. That Pathak would choose this as the framework for her book is more than fitting, not only because Pathak’s poetry is itself endlessly vivid and evocative, but because she explores a vast emotional territory.
The first section, after the prelude, is named Thaat. A subheading simply denotes it as “The Parent Scale.” The first poem of the section, “Ghazal for the Children Born Far from Home,” demonstrates with its brilliant couplets that this section is aptly named:
Rama scaled the ocean/Bheeshma died pillowed on a bed of arrows Their ghosts in your marrow unstirring, this is my sorrow
In the bazaar you petted unblemished baby goats, you didn’t know they were meant for slaughter, this is my sorrow
Exiled from a language where yesterday also means tomorrow You wander thirsty with no tongues, this is my sorrow.
Dedicated to her sons, the poem is a perfect example of Yamini’s poetic ability as well as the themes of the first section of the book. She is able to conjure huge depths of emotion, acknowledging the sadness she feels at her sons growing up without their ancestral tongue but also endless possibility as she mentions the time-bending aspect of that tongue and the magical imagery of the religion she was raised with. Where there is beauty, there is violence; where there is sorrow, there is the memory of joy.
It isn’t just the poems themselves that make this book memorable, though. It’s often how they are ordered. The final three poems of the second section demonstrate this to devastating effect. All poems seem, in some way, to be looking back at some place, or some person, that cannot be returned to. They all deal with the death of the speaker’s father. In “On a Far Afternoon,” as the speaker’s father is dying in the hospital, they pass by “a hall / where marriages are sealed by flame. / Every morning a white mare / grazed outside.” It’s a line that Gabriel García Márquez would’ve written. In the next poem, “Everest,” she describes the moment when the painting of the same name by Nichola Roerich brings tears to her eyes when she sees it in a gallery. The only indication that these tears might be for her father comes in a line that is all the more searing for its candor: “Only a week since my father died.”
Then comes “Hunger,” the last poem of the section. The bulk of the poem describes how the narrator prepares a cauliflower for a meal, listening to Yo-Yo Ma talk on a podcast while she does so. The façade, like any façade, has cracks, and the grief seeps through: “I imagined a space like a cavernous chest, / the cello pulsing at its heart…My own chest vibrated, empty.” The experience of beauty is likened to receiving “a glimmer of impermanence.” And as Yo-Yo Ma’s band plays at the end, they “intone a dirge.” Here, it’s Pathak’s restraint that recreates the enormous tension of trying to hold yourself together. It’s heart-stopping. This section is named Alaap. Alaap, Pathak tells us, is a melodic improvisation in a raga that “defines the raga, its mood, emphasi[s], secondary notes.” The mood of this raga, then, seems to be the mood of departure, of memory, and grief.”
The last section is called Pakad, which is a “musical phrase that establishes the identity of a raga, encapsulating its essence.” An overarching theme here is more elusive. These poems are focused more on the day-to-day experiences of the narrator, such as perimenopause or dealing with unpleasant coworkers. (It also contains a poem called “Poem with No Apology,” which is one of the best love poems I’ve ever read. The line “I love you like I love a novel that makes me sad / it has ended” is one I will wish for the rest of my life I had written for my girlfriend.) I think, though, that this smattering of experience and emotion is the point. It comes the closest to the experience of actual selfhood, of real life, and, having read the book, it appears that this is the essence of Pathak’s raga. The reminiscences that have come beforehand have shaped the person the narrator is now. What we, the reader, are supposed to take away from that fact, I’m not sure; Pathak is a better writer than to provide an answer for us. Maybe, going back to that love poem, it is to love the places and people we encounter “like a burning building, like there’s no more time to waste.” Or maybe it comes in one of my favorite poems of the collection, “The Cosmos Asks Three Questions,” in which the universe itself speaks to the narrator:
At the airport, that woman by the sliding doors, homeless and babbling like a river with stones in its underbelly? She could be you, escaped from a parallel universe through a rent in my fabric…The galaxies are pitted with black holes, gravitational lenses that bend and distort light so that everything is chimera, illusion, Maya…If you led a blameless life, you need not fear my teeth.
Joseph Norris graduated with a BFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College in May of 2025. He has had short stories and poems published in Half and One, Gauge, won the Humans of the World Summer Poetry Prize, and made the Shortlist for the 2025 Letter Review Poetry Prize. His debut poetry chapbook, The Remains, was published by Bottlecap Press in March of 2026. He lives in Berkeley, California with his girlfriend Macie and their cat, Dory, and is learning how to play the guitar and the banjolin.
Disclaimer: if at any point this post starts sounding a little too much like it was written by a pretentious middle-aged man, you have permission to steal everything I own. All 106 records, 70 cassettes, 22 VHS tapes, 109 CDs, and 79 DVDs—I mostly collect from various vintage and secondhand stores and, of course, the few local record stores around Knoxville. Just the other day, my 12 year old sister came up to me and asked if I could bring her somewhere to get a record for her friend’s birthday party. She (the friend) had just gotten a record player, and I’m pretty much the only person my sister knows who collects that sort of thing. Of course I took her to Lost and Found and it was a fun trip, but we had limited info on what kind of music her friend listens to and didn’t end up getting anything. Never fear—I made her friend a little zine on how to take care of her records instead, which was an overall much cheaper option and one that allowed my sister to pick out something else for her friend instead.
Still, it made me think about my own philosophy (if you will) about collecting physical media and enjoying art. I excluded books in the little list above because I genuinely have too many to reasonably count, but I promise they are relevant here as well. But back to my records and tapes: yes, I like them because I can hold them in my hands. Yes, I like them for their tangibility (sleeve out of the jacket, record out of the sleeve, record onto the platter). Yes, I like knowing that I truly own these pieces of art and no corporation can censor them or remove my access to them at will.
More than that, though, I love that I can’t skip a song without going through a lot of trouble. If I want to skip ahead while playing a record, I have to lift the needle, move it, and drop it into the precise groove where the next song starts. If I want to skip ahead on a cassette or VHS, I have to push a button and let the tape wind itself up and hope I stop it at just the right moment (which almost never happens). Everything takes effort and none of the effort will every produce perfection.
On one hand, this system has allowed me to develop the tiniest percent more patience, which is always a helpful thing. On the other hand, not being able to skip around on the “highlights” of an album has encouraged me to look at albums in their entirety with a much greater level of respect. Of course, I still listen to music digitally when I want to make a playlist or listen to a specific song—not every album is perfect or anywhere near it, and I don’t have the space or money to own half as many albums as I’d actually listen to. But since I started collecting media that forces me to slow down, I have slowed down.
If an artist puts ten songs on an album in a specific order, that order is intentional. The important part is that intentionality does not equal perfection. In my own writing habits, I try to apply this value to all drafts, but especially earlier ones. And with generative AI as a threat in lots of circles, prioritizing being intentional over being perfect feels like a step in the right direction both creatively and generally. While I’m hoping my sister’s friend gets as much fun out of her new hobby as she possibly can, I’m also hoping that through it, she might value art more intentionally.
Joan Alft (she/any) is an undergraduate student at the University of Tennessee studying publishing and creative writing. Her short story “Pilgrim” is forthcoming in the Phoenix Literary Arts Magazine where she works as an Assistant Prose/Fiction Editor. Gothic themes and relationships, the dichotomy between the familiar and unfamiliar, and confusingly intense devotion in places where it shouldn’t be are a few things she enjoys seeing in others’ art and tries integrating in her own projects. In her free time, Joan collects physical media (records, cassettes, DVDs, CDs, and VHS tapes, oh my!), hangs out at local coffeeshops, and sews on occasion.
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present Poetry Xfit hosted by Alexa White. This generative workshop event will take place on Sunday, September 27th, 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!
Alexa White is a mixed-race, neurodivergent writer and graduate of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she earned her BA in Creative Writing and Studio Art. Alexa lives in Knoxville, her semi-hometown, and is the Creative Director and Assistant Editor at Sundress. She takes delight in backroads, quarries, and the last few seconds of sunset and redefines her bedtime nightly.
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “For Colored Girls: A Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of For Colored Girls Who’ve Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow is Enuf” a workshop led by Monica Prince, on Wednesday, September 9th from 6:00-7:30 PM EST. This event will be held over Zoom. Participants can register for the event here.
Join us for an online celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Broadway debut of Ntozake Shange’s seminal work, For Colored Girls Who’ve Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow is Enuff. This showcase of poets who’ve performed Shange’s work and/or been inspired by it, includes choreopoet, director, and educator Monica Prince who will lead the evening. She will be joined by an incredible line-up of poets including Shakeema Smalls, M. Mick Powell, Sullivan Summer, Jasmine Blooms and Rosa Castellano.
The evening will start and end with Shange’s words with the aim of inspiring a new generation to read her work and to give time and space to the sharing of what that work has meant to those present. It will be heart opening.
If you would like to support Sundress, you may make a charitable donation here in lieu of a ticket purchase. Your contribution supports our commitment to offering experiences like this to our community at no cost, improving arts accessibility for all.
Yance Wyatt’s The Watersmith (Regal House Publishing, 2026) is a thoroughly Appalachian tale that seeks to interact with familial conflict and cyclical addiction by focusing on its protagonist’s development. Jack Calloway, a father and alcoholic, grapples with the way his relationship with his son mirrors his relationship with his own father. Wyatt writes with a distinct voice that still escapes from being the focus of his writing—instead, his strength lies in the way he intertwines the setting’s atmosphere with the characters’ drive and personalities. With a decently tight-knit cast of characters, The Watersmith covers a lot of ground in a relatively short page count and does so without feeling unnecessarily distilled.
Set predominantly in Marion County, Tennessee, The Watersmith follows Jack Calloway through his relationships with his wife, son, and self as the family is forced to confront the ways they deal with grief, regret, and permanency. When Jack and his half-estranged son JJ find a somewhat dilapidated moonshine still on his recently deceased parents’ land, the two decide to repair it. Jolene—Jack’s wife—steps in only to get caught in a severe fire, suffering debilitating wounds to her entire upper body. Jolene is rendered unable to see and hear, and Jack sets out on a progressively more and more drastic journey to produce essential oils and perfumes that he can offer her as a sort of olive branch.
The most thought-provoking parts of The Watersmith lie in the way Wyatt highlights the cyclical nature of alcoholism and other kinds of addiction. Jack’s relationship with alcohol subtly hangs over the narrative—it’s an aspect of his disposition that he refuses to fumble with after the story’s turning point, but one that he retreats to in similarly destructive albeit less obvious ways. Jack’s relationship with JJ serves as a yardstick by which to measure his priorities and selfishness. At one point, Jack says, “Sometimes the fondness for it skips a generation and boomerangs back. Not usually, though. Usually, it’s more like a baton.” Wyatt is in dialogue with a certain kind of duality in regards to the way he thematically explores addiction. It’s passive (waiting for the boomerang), but not without a sense of violence (the boomerang itself). It’s active (the passing of the baton), and it’s also accepted (the taking of the boomerang). Jack’s relationship with JJ is intertwined with his relationship with alcohol in a way, yet Wyatt does not rail on such a connection in a way that makes the reader bored of it.
The aspect of Jack’s character that I came back to most frequently while reading was his glaring disregard for the upkeep of his relationships. Yes, he cares about Jolene; yes, he cares about JJ—but he seemed to lack any kind of urgency in the way he interacts with either of them. Most of his actions seem dispassionate on some level, yet the narrative (being in first person from his point of view) focuses on his thoughts and emotions. While I feel as though one result of this focus made both Jolene and JJ feel like relatively flat characters who served primarily as plot devices in Jack’s story, such a phenomenon could also serve to highlight the distance Jack’s addiction created between him and the people around him. His thoughts on his loved ones often circle back to himself as is displayed in a thought he has during an interaction with JJ. Jack comments, “Now, if there’s one thing a man can’t stand, it’s witnessing the worst part of himself in another.” Thus, the story’s hyperfocus on Jack serves, in a way, to reinforce the frequently cyclical nature of abuse and addiction.
Jack’s character development eventually begins to create its own cyclical movement, and his relationships with his family and his own inventiveness are pulled along on the journey. Wyatt writes Jack in a way that makes him feel both stagnant and evolving at the same time. He’s thrust forward in some areas while being pulled backwards in others—the areas where Jack regresses are duplicated by the areas where he improves, and both sides of the equation are being pushed and pulled at by interacting factors in his disposition and environment. Thus the thematically cyclical nature of the history and physical environment of the story are both condensed and expanded within Jack as a character, and many moving parts are sharpened by the way they rebound from each other.
Joan Alft (she/any) is an undergraduate student at the University of Tennessee studying publishing and creative writing. Her short story “Pilgrim” can be found in the summer 2026 edition of Phoenix Literary Arts Magazine where she works as an Assistant Prose/Fiction Editor. Gothic themes and relationships, the dichotomy between the familiar and unfamiliar, and confusingly intense devotion in places where it shouldn’t be are a few things she enjoys seeing in others’ art and tries integrating in her own projects. In her free time, Joan collects physical media (records, cassettes, DVDs, CDs, and VHS tapes, oh my!), hangs out at local coffeeshops, and sews on occasion.
With over 20 years of writing under his belt, former SAFTA resident Darren C. Demaree breaks down his poetic style, themes, and inspirations with Sundress intern Rachel Bulman. In an interview based on his two-decade spanning collection Now Flourish Northern Cardinal (Selected Poems 2005-2025), Demaree discusses his process and stylistic choices throughout the included poems, aptly described as ‘‘painfully—and wonderfully—human’’ (Manuel Iris). The collection is a finalist for the Ohio Book Award in Poetry as well as the 2026 Reader’s Choice Award.
Rachel Bulman: Starting broad, this collection covers two decades of work, from 2005-2025. In your own words, how has your writing developed since you started publishing works?
Darren C. Demaree: I think the challenge, the experimentation, has become much more important to me. I think it’s much more fun to try new things instead of continuing to refine a particular voice. It’s taken my writing to a lot of different places. Not all of them worked, but if you’re going to be a lifer, if you’re going to write all the time and as long as you can, this is the only way to enjoy it. Failing is acceptable. It didn’t used to be when I was younger. Now, my assumption is that if I’m bored in the process the readers will be bored when they read it. The tethers, the music, and energy of the work can really vibrate if you’re challenged in a new way.
RB: I noticed a distinct tonal shift when the poems turn to ‘‘Emily.’’ How might you describe what changes in your poems from before to after?
DCD: That’s my voice. That’s my natural cadence and poetic leanings. I respect that those poems might be successful because that’s when my mind is really lithe and strong. Processing and pulling at the most dynamic love I’ve ever known opens me up in undeniable ways. I feel different when I write the Emily poems. I fear nothing when I write the Emily poems.
RB: Many of your poems have many versions, sometimes up to #300: ‘‘We Are Arrows,’’ ‘‘Nude Male with Echo,’’ ‘‘neverwell,’’ etc. What about this format appeals to you? And something I am curious about is: how do you know when to stop?
DCD: I map out a book-length sequence the same way a novelist might map out a plot. It looks different, it takes a different focus on the music and energy and will involve purposeful word and phrase repetitions to give the reader markers to follow along some very long paths, but it’s very similar. I’ll have arcs planned out that are a certain length. I know when the first one is finished, and then it’s building out from there what the length of the project will be. Those really take a lot of time to prep, but it’s so easy for them to go off the rails it’s worth it to spend that time.
RB: That’s a brilliant and (at least to me) an unfamiliar way of approaching writing poetry. Could you talk about how you developed that system, or how you found your own rhythm with it?
DCD: I think with large, connected poetry projects, like a numbered book-length sequence, it’s really easy to get lost in something that never ends and leaves the reader grasping for something more than just poetic vibes. I wanted more control than that. If it’s mania you still have to control the energy of it. If it’s philosophical it can’t be a list of questions consuming each other. The ideas and pacing, the actual artistry of it, can’t be buried in the bigness of the project. That takes a lot of planning. I came by it honestly, with a lot of failed attempts to learn how it would work best for me.
RB: Your poetry occasionally exhibits fascinations with certain people or things—Emily, Sam Cooke, etc.—how do you identify an inspiration, and is there a conscious criterion?
DCD: The Emily one is easy. Writing about Sam Cooke in Lady, You Shot Me (2018) or when the Weatherman bombed the Thinker outside of the Cleveland Museum of Art in Bombing the Thinker (2018) or the Ray Mancini/Duk Koo Kim title fight in Temporary Champions (2014) were fascinations of mine that I really wanted to research and learn more about. It’s been a long time since I’ve done a research-inspired collection. It puts the guardrails on a project for me, or at least it used to. It frames things in a particular way that I haven’t been interested in recently. Maybe I’ll come back to it again later, but I’ve been much more interested in philosophies and politics and language-play for the last decade.
RB: Animals: bears, sheep, owls, wolves, etc., are abundant in this collection. Can you speak to their inclusion in your poetry?
DCD: Are you with the deer? So much of the friction in this world revolves around the question of are you living with an attachment to the natural world? I think it defines us. I want my work to feature what I consider to be a vital pivot point for humanity. Can we hold this world as close as we need to, but never consume it? Loving and identifying with animals opens up that lane the same way landscapes do.
RB: ‘‘Emily As the Length of a Fox’’ brought to mind a comparison to Ted Hughes’ ‘‘The Thought Fox’’ (1957) I’d noticed earlier in the collection but hadn’t been able to identify. I read the poem as observant, impersonal and, in places, brutal, can you talk about the inspiration behind this and the ‘‘Emily’ series?
DCD: Interrogating this love, this relationship, forcing it into surreal or palpable weirdness or nature or stark and defiant honesty or any number of things is my mind and heart working to its ecstatic hum. It makes a ton of sense for everyone that’s met Emily. I’m coming up on a thousand of these poems published. There will be more after that. That’s what she is. She’s the inciting incident of my whole world.
RB: Although you continually shift the structure later in the collection, what inspired the decision to have ‘‘The Field Party #1’’ act as the first diversion from your established enjambement-heavy poetic format? Feel free to elaborate on the use of structure in your work.
DCD: I love what prose poems allow me to do with language repetition, especially when I also abandon punctuation. My form is always dictated by the rules of engagement for the project. How can I get away with what I want to do in a way that is understandable? How can I defy all that when I want to? The aspect of play and challenging yourself as an artist is dramatically important. My form choices inevitably come from that. Even in The Luxury (2023), a book about nature catastrophes, which had a strict syllable count, that was done to force me to write as if I was choking. Form has to have a function or it’s just a conceit to be done away with.
RB: The collection is heavily influenced by location, specifically Ohio. Could you discuss the relationship of this location to you and to your poetry?
DCD: Other than the several months I lived in Tuscaloosa, AL, I’ve lived in Ohio my whole life. It’s been nose to nose with me since I was born. I love it. I hate it. It wants to change me to be like it, and I refuse. I write about Ohio because I’m engaged in an active battle between what my home is, and what I want it to be. It’s defined me that way. I’m not backing down and I’m not moving. I’ll always write as an Ohioan with a great tension. That’s why I can’t stop doing it.
RB: Lastly, is there anything else I didn’t touch on that you would like to discuss? Any new projects or releases coming up?
DCD: My newest book, Got There: Poems on Vanishing, came out in April from April Gloaming Publishing. It’s a book inspired by a photograph Alina Stefanescu took. I’m really proud of it. I hope folks will check it out.
Darren C. Demaree is the author of twenty-five full-length poetry collections, most recently Got There: Poems on Vanishing (April Gloaming Publishing, April 2026). He is the recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal.
Rachel Bulman (she/her) holds a BA in English and Creative Writing as well as an MA in Publishing from the University of Exeter, specialising in interactive and children’s fiction. Her written work has appeared in The Book of Choices, Velvet Fields, and Exeposé, among others. Find her on Instagram @worm.can.read, through her online portfolio, or ask the bridge troll who taught him his riddles three.
How To Steal a Train by M.C Shmidt is a humorous collection of ten short stories that portray human nature. These stories explore rebuilding relationships, confronting oneself, how people can cling to human connection, and the varying aspects of daily life. Schmidt depicts these tales in a witty and relatable manner that encourages readers to scan the pages to dive deeper into the context. Each story brings its own unique perspective on aspects of human nature. The title of the book, How to Steal a Train, is in fact its own metaphor for accepting change and growth.
A theme that I find fascinating in these stories is worship. While worship takes many forms in the modern world, these stories focus primarily on two: religious devotion and celebrity worship. The story “The Ohio Stigma of 2009” reveals two sides of a coin when it comes to seeing what is in front of you. Some may argue that it is human nature to believe in a higher power and worship; others may argue that it is in fact the opposite. This piece encapsulates the difference between those who rely on what they see in front of them, and those who rely on faith. It touches on how in both fiction and reality rifts can widen between people because of their differences and how they can choose to set their differences aside, for better or for worse.
However, “We Love You, Ringo,” explores how celebrity worship can lead to one’s downfall. By following the tribute performer’s slow realization that he has been neglecting his own life for a lie, the story reveals the dangers of fame culture. No matter how admired celebrities may be, we can never truly know them for who they are. I see parasocial relationships plenty in celebrity culture—people attempting to embody someone they do not personally know yet they love, or at least think they do. “We Love You, Ringo” is a wake-up call to not neglect your own life in lieuof worshiping someone else’s.
“The Middle Distance” was my personal favorite in Schmidt’s collection—a story about fatality and the natural defiance of it. Katherine’s father, Malcom, delivers a powerful monologue about the reality of aging. A delivery that unfolds the struggle about a loss of control; “Being old means not dying. It means waking up tomorrow with your body incrementally more restricted (…) and wondering if you’ve become less for it.” The narrative portrays the defiance that humans have against something as natural as aging. Katherine refuses to stay stationary. As she climbs the tree, metaphorically challenging life’s inevitabilites, readers root for her to reach the top just as vehemently as her father does.
The themes of second chances and re-connection are explored in a few of Schmidt’s short stories. In “‘”Gnats,” those themes are developed through the cynical yet hilarious telling of a widower’s home being overrun by gnats, only for those gnats to vanish when he opens himself up to a second chance. “On Being Born Again” explores a lost Audra, anxious about a reunion with the daughter she let down, only to realize that there is a chance for a relationship for them. “The Dream Girls” follows a grieving Boris and his beloved sourdough starter forced into an awkward reunion with Audra, which blossoms into the potential for more.
This book ends the collection with a metaphor about change. “Do you think it’s possible to steal a train?” Audra texts Boris after their escapade to the horror convention in “The Dream Girls.” While Boris takes the question literally, Audra reveals that it is more to consider behind the idea. How to Steal a Train is about opening yourself up to more.
How to Steal a Train allowed me to focus on the small interactions that can lead to something much greater. This collection is relatable not only in its exploration of weighty themes, including worship, aging, and death, but also in the way Shmidt portrays the wide range of human emotions. Whether it was Katherine’s defiance, Boris’s anxiety, or Audra’s self-doubt, I was able to see a part of myself in these stories. Shmidt’s ability to capture the emotions and experiences of contemporary life makes these stories feel deeply human.
If you enjoy character-centric stories that explore hope, anxiety, and what it means to be human, How To Steal a Train will engulf you into the lives of those who are trying their best in the only way they know how.
Nafisa Hussain (she/her) holds a BSc in Anthropology and Sociology from Brunel University, where she primarily focused her work on race issues in the UK. She has published book reviews in the Hillingdon Herald Newspaper and volunteers for the Society of Young Publishers.
My bookshelf is not that of a highly sophisticated scholar, but it is a shelf full of dreams, magic, and fulfilled promise to a little girl with a big imagination. I love books that take you on an adventure and build worlds in your mind, books that make you think about connection and the experience that is life.
The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
This book and trilogy have a special place in my heart and a permanent spot on my bookshelf. It is the first fantasy series I ever read and really laid the foundation for my love of the genre. It’s full of fairies, political intrigue, schemes, and the most intense slow burn romance that is so subtle I still think about it to this day. I often find myself fantasizing about what my life would be if I was whisked off to Elfhame.
The Spellshop by Sarah Best Durst
If cozy magic was a book, it would be this book. When I pick up a book, I am looking for an escape to a land far from this one, and this was the perfect read for that. It had all the whimsical elements I look for when reading; the book felt like one giant hug and an ode to all my childhood imaginations. It has baking, talking plants, cats with wings, a unicorn, merfolk, and above all else, BOOKS. One of my favorite quotes of all time came from this treasure: “It wasn’t that she didn’t like people. It was that she liked books more. They didn’t fuss or judge or mock or reject. They invited you in, fluffed up the pillows on the couch, offered you tea and toast, and shared their hearts with no expectation that you’d do anything more than absorb what they had to give.”
I could go on and on about all the stories on my shelf, but I fear I would be typing an entire manuscript. So here is my book horde that I guard proudly like a ferocious yet sleepy dragon.
I am Miranda, a cat mom of one, but if you count the feral cats who use their charming manipulation on me (their cute faces), I am a cat mom of 4-8 on any given day. I love the color pink; I am very fond of fairies, and escaping into a book is what I do best. I really pride myself on creativity and have tried almost every hobby there is to try. I am currently a senior at UTK; my major is Business Management, and I’m minoring in English.
