Katie Manning’s 28,065 Nights (River Glass Books, 2020) is beautifully both elegy and ode, prose and poetry. Through twenty pages of patient reflection, Manning honors one of the most special people in her life, her Granny. As someone who recently lost her own grandmother, I found these poems remarkably relatable; their emotions ring true and universal. And still, Manning’s chapbook is very much uniquely hers, with honest details and nuance that brilliantly navigate grief and love with grace.

28,065 Nights functions on a steady heartbeat, with each prose poem a neat block on the page and with little variation in form. This safe rhythm allows writer and readers alike to settle in and more closely examine the complex aftermath of loss. The chapbook begins with an explanation, indicating Manning’s desire to make sense of something. In “Your Death Explained in Birds,” Manning looks towards nature for answers, though at this point the reader doesn’t know who the “you” is yet. She writes, “Death is the great egret at the swamp, picking newly hatched green herons from their cypress nest…Death is the egret dropping fresh young birds into the swamp with barely a ripple.” (Manning 1). Such disheartening imagery points towards not just the circle of life, but an insignificant and commonplace quality of death. Other lines aim to define the self amongst such loss. Manning states, “I am the pregnant woman standing horrified and helpless. I am the mother heron shrieking and snapping on the branch below. I am the smallest green heron in the nest” (1). The ability to place oneself in multiple positions, to know oneself literally and metaphorically, demonstrates Manning’s dexterity as a poet and provides insight towards the keen self-awareness to follow in the chapbook.

Manning paints a vivid picture of Granny for readers to care about and grieve for. One of the strongest poems from 28,065 Nights, “How to Use Vanilla,” has a didactic title. In the midst of loss, it’s natural to look for directions in order to move forward. Manning learns not only how to make syrup for waffles, but also about the type of woman Granny was. She shares:

“You told me that when you were young, poor girls used vanilla extract as perfume…You’d save it for secret dates, for sneaking off to carnivals. One drop for an older boy, two drops if Daddy disapproved of him for driving too fast.” (Manning 3)

For so many folks, it’s hard to imagine familial elders as people living their lives before their roles as grandparent, parent, etc. in relation to our existence. For example, a later poem, “I Sniff Your Socks,” includes a tender description of Granny: “They smell like you—clean soap, a light blue smell. I handle them carefully and keep them folded” (Manning 13). On the surface, such details are fitting for a grandmother or matriarch. “How to Use Vanilla,” on the other hand, is a delightful celebration to a young woman’s ingenuity, resourcefulness, and rebellious nature. Even though the poem ends on the domestic image of homemade waffles, Manning has flashed an entire life in the previous lines.

At times, Manning’s speaker admits to the struggle of actualizing her main subject in words. When one is first the listener and later becomes the storyteller, details are forgotten, reshaped, or given different significance. “Thomas Anthony,” an example of this phenomenon, is a sad poem about a stillborn child. While the poem ends with an admittance, “The last time you told me this story, I realized I’d never asked the baby’s name” (7), the title reminds readers that Manning, at some point, did learn. Manning uses a seemingly simple format to house her poems, and yet such play with suspense and timing has me rereading them over and over.

Throughout 28,065 Nights, Manning’s speaker acknowledges the passing of time with a tone that’s mature and also saddened. She asks in the middle of the chapbook: “Can the memory of you stay in these things…?” (12). Even without grief or trauma, memory is challenging to control. Poems, objects, stories, places, and familiar faces all help us retain beloved moments in our minds, but ultimately, like nature’s circle of life for the egret in the swamp, there is loss and new birth. One of the later poems in the book, structured as three prose blocks, is organized around three basic understandings that relate to the past, present, and future: “Your house is the setting of my earliest stories…Your house is also my mind’s blueprint for every other house…Your house is someone else’s house now” (16). Once again, Manning reveals information in the title, “The New Owner Invited Me In,” that readers then understand more clearly once they reach the last line.

28,065 Nights is touching and honest portrayal of losing a matriarch. Manning’s details of the past and questions for the future show all the nuances that come with grief, including laughter, joy, and healing. She ends the chapbook with the title poem, which emphasizes the necessity of stories. 28,065 Nights, therefore, also functions on the whole as a set of instructions, encouraging readers to hold onto stories as tightly as possible, that they are as vital as breathing to keep moving on, to continue living life to the fullest.

28,065 Nights is available from River Glass Books

---

Livia Meneghin (she/her) is the author of the chapbook Honey in My Hair and the Sundress Publications Reads Editor. She earned a Writers’ Room of Boston Poetry Fellowship, Breakwater Review‘s 2022 Peseroff Prize, and Second Place in The Room Magazine‘s 2023 Poetry Contest. Her writing has found homes in Gasher, Thrush, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA from Emerson College, where she now teaches writing and literature. She is a cancer survivor.

I’m not joking when I say I’ve had several mothers and fathers, mountains of people that roll through my life like the hills I know as my home. When I say I’ve lived everywhere in Knoxville, I’m not kidding at all, and I know I can’t trade it for the world. But oh boy do I try! My place in this world is one to learn, that’s about as much as you can ask from me as an early-twenty-something. What better way to learn than to read the works of others?

As it has grown over the years, I find myself more and more attracted to my hometown’s book scene. McKay’s, estate and yard sales, as well as any secondhand book store, are the most likely places to find me. So many accessible books! From a very young age, I found myself pouring over textbooks, almanacs, encyclopedias, memoirs, and the mythology series we all read as kids. 

I know it is important to share the works of others. I’ve always needed them to feel like someone walks beside me. These things, as well as the popular morning sun and waning moon in every college poem, are what have compelled me to dream of writing.

I’ve worked odd jobs since I was fourteen; coffee shops, retail, hospital work, and research, sometimes multiple at once. However, my passion really lies in digital archives and preservation. Have you ever held a work of art older than you are? It’s what I’ve chosen to work in for now. People have always praised my work ethic or the way I meld smoothly into whatever’s thrown at me, and now I think to myself, “What if there’s something more? Something left to do I haven’t yet?” 

I don’t want to write about what makes other people happy or what is the most productive. I want to write about the laughs between construction workers when the birds wake and a pole falls into the snow. I want to write about a girl in her car, working the grind in fast food, winning the lottery. I want to write the morning sun for someone who thought they’d outgrown learning. I am so, so grateful to write for Sundress Publications because of the doors I know it will open for my future and all of the reading I am sure to do more of this semester. Whenever I read, I learn to write, and whenever I learn to write, I learn how to live a life well-penned.

---

Brendon Blair is an Appalachia-borne writer born and bred on trailer living and warm Mexican cuisine. Having a dual major in Psychology and English from the University of Tennessee Knoxville, Brendon enjoys intertwining the experiences of queer and fostered people in poetry and prose. They also hold an administrative assistantship at the Office of Science and Technology Information in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. When not writing or working, Brendon enjoys playing strategy games, and dreams of owning a cat to call Eggs Benedict.

Sundress Publications is pleased to announce that the readers for our 2024 AWP off-site journals reading, which include beestung, Rogue Agent, Doubleback Review, and The Wardrobe, include KB Brookins, Cat Ingrid Leeches, Crystal Odelle, Jess Sifa, Caitlin Cowan, Amy Haddad, Lenna Jawdat, Atia Sattar, Madeleine Barnes, Mary Hawley, Ania Payne, Remi Recchia, Asa Drake, and Jae Nichelle. The reading will take place on February 9^th, 2024, from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM at Nimble Brewing Company 1735 Oak Street Kansas City, MO 64108.

beestung readers

KB Brookins is a writer, cultural worker, and artist from Texas. They are the author of How to Identify Yourself with a Wound (Kallisto Gaia Press 2022), Freedom House (Deep Vellum 2023), and Pretty (Alfred A. Knopf 2024). How to Identify Yourself with a Wound won the Saguaro Poetry Prize, the Writer’s League of Texas Discovery Prize, and a Stonewall Honor Book Award. Freedom House has received praise from Vogue, BookRiot, Autostraddle, and others. KB is a 2023 National Endowment of the Arts Fellow with writing published in Poets.org, Teen Vogue, Oxford American, and elsewhere. Follow them online at @earthtokb.

Cat Ingrid Leeches is a writer, editor, and adjunct. Their collection, I Wander the Earth, Hungry For Semen, is forthcoming from Carrion Bloom Books.

Crystal Odelle (they/she) is a queer trans storyteller and author of the chapbook Trans Studies (Gold Line Press, 2024). Their stories have appeared in Black Warrior Review, Split Lip Magazine, beestung, manywor(l)ds, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere. Crystal was a Tin House Scholar and Lambda Literary Fellow, nominated for Best of the Net, and anthologized in We’re Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction. She writes RPGs at Feverdream Games and serves as academic and administrative coordinator for the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Washington University in St. Louis.

Jess Silfa is an Afro-Latine writer from the South Bronx. They graduated with an MFA in Fiction from Vanderbilt University and are currently a PhD student at the University of Cincinnati as a Yates Fellow. Jess is President of the Disabled and D/deaf Writers Caucus and has been published or has work forthcoming in ANMLY, beestung, Transition Magazine, and others.

Rogue Agent readers

Caitlin Cowan is the author of Happy Everything (Cornerstone Press, 2024). She has taught writing at UNT, Texas Woman’s University, and Interlochen Center for the Arts. Caitlin works in arts nonprofit administration for Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp, where she serves as Director of International Programs and as Chair of Creative Writing. Caitlin also serves as Poetry Co-Editor at Pleiades and writes PopPoetry, a weekly poetry and pop culture newsletter. She lives on Michigan’s west coast with her husband, their young daughter, and two mischievous cats. Find her at caitlincowan.com.

Amy Haddad is a poet, nurse, and Professor Emerita at Creighton University. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals, including Journal of Medical Humanities, Touch, Bellevue Literary Review, Pulse, Persimmon Tree, Annals of Internal Medicine, Aji Magazine, DASH, Oberon Poetry Magazine, and Rogue Agent. Her first chapbook, The Geography of Kitchens, was published by Finishing Line Press in August 2021. Her first poetry collection, An Otherwise Healthy Woman, was published by Backwaters Press in 2022. The collection won first place in the Creative Works category of the American Journal of Nursing 2022 Books of the Year Awards. You can learn more about her work at: www.amyhaddadpoetry.com.

Lenna Jawdat is a D.C.-based writer and psychotherapist. Her writing, which explores trauma, identity, and resilience, has appeared in Poet Lore, Passenger’s Journal, Rogue Agent, and Koukash Review, among others. She was a 2023 Sundress Academy for the Arts summer resident and 2021 Best of the Net nominee for her poem “Ode to the Psoas.” She is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts, where she is Poetry Co-Editor for Chapter House Journal. Lenna is currently working on a book-length visual documentary poem.

Atia Sattar is a Pakistani-born teacher, scholar, and meditator living in Los Angeles. Her writing explores the embodied intersections of gender, race, mindfulness, and motherhood. Her work has appeared in various publications, including Rogue Agent, Lion’s Roar, Tricycle, and The Cambridge Quarterly for Health Care Ethics. She is Associate Teaching Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Southern California.

Doubleback Review readers

Madeleine Barnes is a writer, artist, and PhD candidate at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her debut full-length poetry collection, You Do Not Have To Be Good, was published by Trio House Press in 2020. She is also the author of four chapbooks, most recently The Memory Dictionary (Ethel Press) and Women’s Work (Tolsun Books). Her dissertation-in-progress explores how women use textile work to survive and respond to violence. She earned her MFA at New York University. madeleinebarnes.com.

Mary Hawley is a fiction writer, poet, and literary translator. Her short stories have appeared in magazines such as Hypertext, The Saturday Evening Post, and Doubleback Review, and she received an Illinois Literary Award for fiction. Her translations (Spanish to English) of poetry and prose have appeared in The Common, TriQuarterly, and Deinos, and she is currently translating a trilogy of novels by the Uruguayan writer Sergio Altesor Licandro. She lives in Evanston, Illinois.

Ania Payne lives in Manhattan, Kansas, with her husband, Great Dane, husky, two tiger cats, and two backyard chickens. She teaches in the English Department at Kansas State University and has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction. She is the author of the chapbook Karma Animalia. She has previously been published in Bending Genres, The Rush, Panorama: The Journal of Intelligent Travel, Whiskey Island, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.

Remi Recchia (he/him), PhD, is a trans poet, essayist, and editor from Kalamazoo, Michigan. A five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Remi’s work has appeared in World Literature Today, Best New Poets 2021, and Prairie Schooner, among others. Works include Quicksand/Stargazing (Cooper Dillon Books, 2021); Sober (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2022); Little Lenny Gets His Horns (Querencia Press, 2023); From Gold, Ghosts: Alchemy Erasures (Gasher Press, 2023); and Transmasculine Poetics: Filling the Gap in Literature & the Silences Around Us (Sundress Publications, forthcoming). Remi has been a Tin House Scholar and Thomas Lux Scholar. He holds an MFA in Poetry from Bowling Green State University.

The Wardrobe readers

Asa Drake is a Filipina American poet and author of the chapbook One Way to Listen (Gold Line Press, 2023). She has received fellowships and awards from the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest, Tin House, and Idyllwild Arts. Her poems have been published with The Slowdown Podcast, The American Poetry Review, The Paris Review Daily, and The Georgia Review.

Louisiana-born and Portland-based Jae Nichelle is the author of God Themselves and the poetry chapbook The Porch (As Sanctuary). She was the inaugural poetry winner of the John Lewis Writing Award from the Georgia Writers Association, and her poetry has appeared in Best New Poets 2020, The Washington Square Review, The Offing, Muzzle Magazine, and elsewhere. She is also a slam poetry champion, and her spoken word poems have been featured by Write About Now, Speak Up Poetry Series, and Button Poetry. 

Sundress Publications is pleased to announce that the readers for our 2024 AWP off-site reading include Heather Bartlett, Sarah Renee Beach, Evelyn Berry, jason b. Crawford, Caleb Curtiss, and Amanda Galvan Huynh. The reading will take place on February 9^th, 2024, from 8:00 PM to 9:00 PM at Nimble Brewing Company 1735 Oak Street Kansas City, MO 64108.

Heather Bartlett is a poet, writer, and professor. She is the author of the poetry collection Another Word for Hunger (Sundress Publications). Her poetry and prose can be found in print and online in journals such as Barrow Street, Lambda Literary, Ninth Letter, Quarterly West, RHINO Poetry, Poet Lore, and others. She teaches creative writing and writing studies at the State University of New York at Cortland and is the founding editor of the online literary magazine Hoxie Gorge Review. Find more of her work at heatherbartlett.com.  

Originally from Southeast Texas, Sarah Renee Beach received her MFA in Creative Writing from The New School, where she was awarded the Dean’s Merit Scholarship. Her debut poetry chapbook, Impact, won Sundress Publication’s 2022 Chapbook Contest. She now lives in Austin, TX, where she is the Program Director at the Writers’ League of Texas. More at sarahreneebeach.com.

Evelyn Berry is a trans, Southern writer, editor, and educator. She’s the author of Grief Slut (Sundress Publications, 2023). She’s a recipient of a 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship and lives in Columbia, South Carolina.

Shlagha Borah (she/her) is from Assam, India. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Bat City Review, EcoTheo Review, Salamander, Nashville Review, Florida Review, South Dakota Review, and elsewhere. She is a 2nd-year MFA candidate in Poetry at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, the Reading Series Coordinator at Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA), and an Editorial Assistant at The Offing. She has received support for her work from Brooklyn Poets, SAFTA, and The Hambidge Center. She is the co-founder of Pink Freud, a student-led collective working towards making mental health accessible in India. 

jason b. crawford (They/He/She) born in Washington, D.C. and raised in Lansing, MI, is the author of Year of the Unicorn Kidz. They have poems in POETRY Magazine, The Cincinnati Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and RHINO Poetry, among others. They are a 2023 Emerging Writers Fellow for Lambda Liteary and hold their MFA in Poetry from The New School. Their second collection, YEET!, is the winner of the Omnidawn 12st/2nd Book Prize and will be published in Fall 2025.

Caleb Curtiss is the author of Age of Forgiveness. His poetry appears in The Gettysburg Review, Image, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. 

Amanda Galvan Huynh (She/Her) is a Xicana writer and educator from Texas. She is the author of Where My Umbilical is Buried (Sundress Publications 2023) and Co-Editor of Of Color: Poets’ Ways of Making: An Anthology of Essayson Transformative Poetics (The Operating System 2019).

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present Poetry Xfit hosted by Z Eihausen. This generative workshop event will take place on Sunday, January 21^st from 2 to 4 pm EST via Zoom. Join us at the link tiny.utk.edu/sundress with the password “safta”. 

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!

Z Eihausen (she/her) is an emerging writer from Tennessee. She is currently a senior at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville studying creative writing and philosophy. She previously interned at Sundress Academy for the Arts and is now Staff Director. She also likes bees.

This event is brought to you in part by grants provided by the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry and the Tennessee Arts Commission. 

While this is a free event, donations can be made to the Sundress Academy for the Arts here.

Each month we split any Xfit donations with our community partner. This month, we are accepting donations for a support grant for the winner of our Summer 2024 Fellowship for Palestinian Writers. This grant will help to fund travel expenses for said writer to attend our residency program this summer.

Welcome back to Lyric Essentials, where we invite authors to share the work of their favorite poets. This month, Remi Recchia joins us to discuss the work of Timothy Liu and the ways in which poetry is just another word for love. As always, we hope you enjoy as much as we did.

---

Ryleigh Wann: When was the first time you read Timothy Liu’s work? Why did it stand out to you
then?

RW: How has Liu’s writing inspired your own?

RR: I read Liu’s work at a time when I was falling madly in love with my now-wife, in the sticky grasp of alcoholism, during the early stages of my hormonal and gender transition. All of these things made me feel things very deeply; I was an intense person and also a little sad. Liu appears to me to be a poet who also feels things very deeply but, unlike the stereotypical masculine artist façade of blasé and cynicism, his work seems to embrace his emotional humanness, his messiness, his longing. I mean, look at these lines: “You touch my knee, and I hear / the brass weights of a grandfather clock / steadily falling in that cottage where / we met, the season’s first snow fresh / on the ground as hands ran up and down / a polished cherry cabinet built / to last” (“Two Men on a Swing Watching Their Shadows Lengthen,” Say Goodnight). Really look at them. In my mess and growth and desperation, how could I resist this language? So, to answer the question: I suppose Liu’s work has inspired my own in that it gave me permission to lean in. To write love poems. To love.

Remi Recchia reads “The Lovers” by Timothy Liu

RW: Why did you choose to read these poems specifically? 

RR: As I’ve indicated earlier, the poem “Winter” is especially significant to me since it was my introduction to Liu’s work, and I’ve carried that meaningfulness with me since then. I chose the others because I feel that they complement each other. They’re thematically linked in that they’re all love poems, of course, the tone in each is different, creating a surprising juxtaposition of poetics. I find “All Trains Going Local” particularly intriguing. The lines, “you who are so used to // anything scribbled on a prescription blank” haunt me. Given my history with addiction, it’s not surprising that they stand out to me. But to any reader, addict or not, it should be noteworthy that those lines directly precede the turn of the poem: “Just want the pain to go away, you say, / surprised to find yourself // reaching for someone else’s hand.” Maybe what I’m saying is that the entire poem is full of twists and turns and revelations. That’s what all poems should do.

Remi Recchia reads “Winter” by Timothy Liu

RW: What have you been up to lately (life, work, anything!)? Got any news to share?

RR: Quite a bit, actually! My second poetry chapbook, From Gold, Ghosts: Alchemy Erasures, was released on November 1. I’ve also just published my first children’s book, Little Lenny Gets His Horns, a collaboration with the up-and-coming artist Victoria Garcia-Boswell. (Please check her out if you haven’t already.) I’m trying to publish my most recent full-length poetry manuscript, Addiction Apocalypse. In terms of other life news, I’m entering the discernment process for Holy Orders with the Episcopal Church.

Read more from this interview at our Patreon

---

Timothy Liu (Liu Ti Mo) was born in 1965 in San Jose, California to immigrant parents from Mainland China. He is the author of twelve books of poems, including Of Thee I Sing, selected by Publishers Weekly as a 2004 Book-of-the-Year; Say Goodnight, a 1998 PEN Open Book Margins Award; and Vox Angelica, which won the 1992 Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award. He has also edited Word of Mouth: An Anthology of Gay American Poetry. Translated into a dozen languages, Liu’s poems have appeared in such places as Best American Poetry, Bomb, Kenyon Review, The Nation, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, The Pushcart Prize, Virginia Quarterly Review and The Yale Review.

Purchase Down Low and Lowdown: Timothy Liu’s Bedside Bottom-Feeder

Remi Recchia, PhD, is a trans poet and essayist from Kalamazoo, Michigan. He is a book editor and also works as a technical editor. A five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Remi’s work has appeared in World Literature Today, Best New Poets 2021, and Juked, among others. Books and chapbooks include Quicksand/Stargazing (Cooper Dillon Books, 2021); Sober (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2022); From Gold, Ghosts: Alchemy Erasures (Gasher Press, 2023); and Transmasculine Poetics: Filling the Gap in Literature & the Silences Around Us (Sundress Publications, forthcoming). Remi has been a Tin House Scholar and Thomas Lux Scholar. He holds an MFA in poetry from Bowling Green State University.

Purchase From Gold, Ghosts: Alchemy Erasures

Ryleigh Wann (she/her) hails from Michigan and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. She earned an MFA from UNC Wilmington where she taught poetry and served as the comics editor for Ecotone. Her writing can be found in The McNeese Review, Longleaf Review, The Shore, and elsewhere. You can visit her website at ryleighwann.com

When I first started to pack my things to move to New York, I knew my books were going to be a problem. I had a lot because every book, even if I hadn’t read it in years, held sentimental value and I couldn’t bare to toss any of them out. But New York was going to be different from Missouri, Florida, and Colorado. There was going to be a lot less space for all my memories, so I needed to make space for new ones. I donated half of my books and yet they still took up the most space in all of my boxes that I planned to ship. I had a delusional thought in my brain that I would be able to make things work, even though I had yet to lay eyes on the apartment I was moving into properly. And the delusion kind of worked out and kind of didn’t. In the sense that my roommates didn’t mind me shoving my books into any available space.

I had windows, my roommate’s empty wine shelf, and a nightstand, so I shoved my books anywhere they would fit. Only after living in my apartment for around two years did I ever get around to getting a bookshelf.

This is just a small sample of my bookshelf. I keep my bookshelf out in the living room, and it holds a mixture of the theory books I gathered during my degree in Ethnic Studies as well as poetry and fiction. My top shelf holds the books I return to the most, both in poetry and non-fiction. I normally return to these books for inspiration like Hybrida by Tina Chang or Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo by Ntozake Shange, or for guidance like Revolutionary Mothering and Radical Dharma.

The rest of my bookshelf is fiction that I consider either on my “to read” or “to reread” and is organized by the spine. Outside of poetry, the majority of my books are fiction with a memoir or two sprinkled in. I gravitate towards queer love stories, fantasy, and family narratives. Malindo Lo is one of my favorite Lesbian fiction authors. A book I’ve beat to death that’s not fiction is Catherine Hardwicke’s Director’s Notebook for Twilight. I’m a cinephile and a Twilight stan and it was her work as a director on that film that made me want to work in film. One of my dreams is to one day write and shoot my own movie.

The books that I keep in my room are organized by what I call sentimental chaos. I say sentimental chaos because in general, I tend to be a mood reader who will return to familiar books time and time again.

The rules for the organization of my nightstand books are actively rereading/or actively just starting. I keep all my library books here as well as the books I draw up on when I need to feel grounded. I just finished rereading All About Love and Their Eyes Were Watching God (my favorite book). Currently working on my Lighting Thief reread as well as starting Lesbian Death. For poetry, I just started Worldly Things by Michael Kleber-Diggs. 

In my window, I keep my journals and copies of my favorite manga series, Skip Beat, as well as books I either return to often or am working through on a recommendation. I like to keep these in my window for comfort. Skip Beat was a series that grew with me from childhood into my adulthood. I draw inspiration and comfort from the characters within those pages, and so even if I’m not actively reading them, they’re always by my side.

---

Zora Satchell is a Black and Chinese American queer poet and cinephile who writes about mental illness, film, family, and friendship. She holds a degree in Ethnic Studies from Colorado State University. She was awarded the Brooklyn Poets Fellowship for winter/spring 2021. She lives on the border of Brooklyn and Queens and tweets from @zora_thee_pony.

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “Humanimal: Between Human Beings and Animals,” a workshop led by Si-Min Chong on January 10^th, 2023, from 6:00-7:30 PM. This event will be held over Zoom. Participants can access the event at tiny.utk.edu/sundress (password: safta).

In this online class, we will read works examining the ways animals, trees, mushrooms, the living beings around us make a home (art), gather food (sustenance), and experiment with ways of being and play. The class will begin with a close reading from writers exploring this theme, followed by writing prompts. We will take inspiration from our kin and experiment with methods such as free-writing, phonetic translations of birdsong, writing next to a tree/plant, or a body/glass of water, and more.

In the spirit of conjuring and collaborating with our kin, we will write or make work by way of prose poetry or lyrical prose, sketches, concrete poetry, or simply, marks on a page. This class is open to writers of all genres who are curious about writing alongside other humanimals.

This event is brought to you in part by grants provided by the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry and the Tennessee Arts Commission.

Si-Min Chong (Min) grew up in the industrial west of Singapore, where the air smells of cacao. She makes work about vessels: women, trees, and snakes. Based in Providence, Rhode Island, she holds an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University.

In this newest installment of “We Call Upon the Author,” Hattie Jean Hayes, a writer and comedian, discusses her debut chapbook, Poems [for, about, because] My Friends. Her cheeky, witty answers expose friendship as craft, lineage, heartbreak, growth, and ultimately, an immense gift. Any writer who wants to learn how to cultivate an intimate relationship with readers should spend time with Hayes’ stunning words.

Marah Hoffman: Poetry has a long and culturally rich history as a vessel for meditations on friendship. Yet, you achieve ingenuity. Poems are displayed horizontally. Stanzas sit side by side, coalescing into a whole, rather than fracturing into parts. Why did you choose poems as gifts for your friends? What is it about the form (or more specifically your unique understanding of the form) that lends itself to intimacy?

Hattie Hayes: First, thanks for this generous and perceptive view of the formal choices in the book. Preserving the structures of the poems was vital, and I’m glad you appreciated my intentional decisions! These poems are gifts, and, like any good gift, they’re all unique to the friends they’re for, about, because. I tried to make sure the form of the poems contributed, which is why you get a squarish block of text like that on a postcard in “The Lady’s Improving,” or the dual dueling stanzas in “little twin stars,” or brief diary-style entries divorced from chronology in “The Year in Pictures.”

I’m a journalist by trade, poet by habit. I’ve written a lot of fiction. I’ve written lots and lots and lots of first-person nonfiction. Poetry allows me to write with a potency I find difficult to access elsewhere. My feelings, especially about friends and friendship, are so intense. The formal constraints of a poem allow me to explore the width and depth of a particular feeling without diluting it, or stepping on myself with justifications and explanations.

MH: What inspired you to include the squares of text dispersed throughout your collection? They contain sweet images that imbue the book with a scrapbook element and, in my view, elevate your writing to a realm outside of poetry.

HH: I’m happy you asked about these “prose interludes.” Years before I started assembling this manuscript, I wrote an eighteen-page essay with the working title “An Oral History of All My Friends.” Eventually I wrote myself into a corner, and I put the essay aside. I remembered it as I was working on this collection, and decided to salvage the parts that might illuminate the poems.

The poems capture feelings. The prose interludes capture moments. In the prose parts of this book, I wanted to trace the lineage of the emotions which drive the book as a whole.

I want to give enormous credit, and much gratitude, to Veronica Bennett at Bullshit Lit, who designed the cover. That definitely contributes to the “scrapbook” feel of this collection. When I sent her my inspiration photos, they included vintage photo albums and cookbooks. Veronica also had the idea to block off the prose into squares, which I really liked. I think it helps the prose stand apart and gives it a “confessional” quality that suits the mood of the collection.

MH: The inclusion of loved ones’ names and identifying details is of frequent debate in the literary world. What is your take?

HH: I am a poet of eager embarrassment. I love writing someone a poem and saying “Hi, I wrote you a poem,” and watching their face while they read it. I love perceiving and being perceived. I love using microscopic images as a vehicle for extrasensory perception, a sort of “Oh my God I was JUST thinking about that the other day, I can’t believe you remember it too.” I love writing something, and crying, and thinking, “I hope other people also cry when they read this,” and then feeling validated if they do. I love when someone sees me too clearly for comfort. I love when I get to remove all doubt that a poem is, in fact, a gift crafted for a specific celebration.

I also love being misunderstood. I love when my closest friends read a poem I’ve written and get it dead wrong. I love sprinkling in a little mystery, and privately rejoicing when people try too hard to understand a line that’s just a movie reference. I love to write down my side of the heartbreak, my angry and vindictive narrative, and leave the other party anonymous, giving myself both the catharsis and the control.

In some cases, to be enigmatic is to invite attention. Not throwaway attention – actual attention. A close reading. However, often, people will read your work and mistake the lack of a specified subject for ambiguity. In other cases, you can invite the same sort of attentive, meaningful reading by saying exactly who the poem is about. Darren Demaree’s “Emily poems” are a great example: there is one “main character,” one subject; she has a robust mythology.

All of this is to say: in my mind, every writer should approach every project differently. There are poems in this book that don’t have names for the protection of me, or others. And then the “name” poems are an explicit gesture of appreciation and recognition, because the people I name in my poems are all people who have loved me into a better poet.

MH: Friendships can, of course, be accompanied by heartbreak. Your tender collection does not ignore rupture. Did you think about the coexistence of hope and despair while organizing your poems? If so, how did this affect structure?

HH: When thinking about heartbreak, I have primarily considered it through the lens of friendship. No one has broken my heart like my friends have. By writing about these friendships, I understand their impact on me.

There are two modalities of organization at play in this book, and together, they create a sort of arc. There are the “character chapters,” which are small groups of poems about specific people. My friend Molly is the most obvious of these; the “Molly poems” conclude the book. There’s a section which centers on Dottie, my cat, and those poems make use of her perspective to some degree. And in the front of the book, there is a sequence of poems that use my most established friendship, with my high school best friend Cassie, as the focal point. I see these as three “cores” of my understanding of friendship. They all represent this unconditional friendship that you can come back to, life after life.

And then there are more thematic chapters. Everything from “The Year in Pictures” to “You Will Find Your People” encompasses the excitement of new friendship and freedom of familiar ones. Then, exactly halfway through the book, things shift. You’ll see that “tktktk” through “A Poem That Takes Place on September 26th” delve more into heartache, in many different shapes.

MH: Poems, For, About, Because My Friends contains a lifetime of relationships. I am curious, how long did it take you to write?

HH: The oldest poems in this collection were written in late 2015, early 2016. They didn’t have a “life” in the outside world. They weren’t published. Some lived in emails to my friend Molly Bilker, who sees most, if not all, of my poems. And other poems in this collection from that time period, I shared with the people they were about. “Marriages So Far,” the first poem in this collection, is about four different people; I think all four of them read their “section.” So that was eight years before the book came out.

The first draft of the manuscript came together during the summer of 2022. I had taken a social media hiatus for six months. The day after my social media break ended, I logged on to Twitter and saw Bullshit Lit was holding a 24-hour contest for chapbook submissions. Fortuitous! I assembled a manuscript, which included my poems and the prose interludes, and that was ultimately accepted for publication in 2023.

In the weeks before the book came out, I worked to finalize the manuscript. I rearranged the poems to fit this “arc” I had in my mind, and I added in some more. “You Will Find Your People,” “Civil Engineering” and “For a Decade” were written in early 2023. I composed those poems with the manuscript in mind. In the time since the first draft came together, I’ve been aligning my writing more intentionally with the themes of friends and friendships.

MH: Do you imagine your readers as friends?

HH: I imagine my friends as readers! I know, in theory, strangers and acquaintances are reading my poetry. But when I think about someone sitting down with my book, I always imagine the face of someone I love. My friends have been such vocal champions of my work that it is a challenge to think of anyone else reading my book. But as I say in the first prose interlude in the book, I have a very willing attachment style. Many of my friendships have grown out of quiet, mutual appreciation for each other’s writing or creative projects. And I think now, having a book out, I’m going to experience a heightened version of that phenomenon. If you’re interested in reading all my thoughts on friendship, you’re likely a qualified candidate for a position as my friend.

Poems [For, About, Because] My Friends is available through Bullshit Lit

---

Hattie Jean Hayes is a writer and comedian, originally from a small town in Missouri, who now lives in New York. Her work has appeared in The Ex-Puritan, Hell Is Real, Janus Literary, HAD, and others. Her writing has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her first book of poems is Poems [for, about, because] My Friends, published by Bullshit Lit. Hattie completed a SAFTA residency in September 2022 and is working on her first novel. You can find her poetry, fiction, newsletter, and other writings at hattiehayes.com.

Marah Hoffman is a poetry and creative nonfiction writer from Reading, Pennsylvania. She is an MFA candidate, graduate teaching assistant, and Ecotone reader at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. In the fall of 2022, she was the long-term writer-in-residence at Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA). Hoffman continues to support SAFTA as Creative Director.