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.
When I tell people about my degree in English Literature, I’m often met with confusion.
It shows itself in different ways: the more subtle knitting of eyebrows or an incredulous look. But it often shows itself verbally, for it seems that people have an immense capacity for curiosity that includes, “Do you want to be a teacher?”
I think I wouldn’t mind being a teacher, actually, if it came down to it. I have so much respect for the teachers that helped to shape me into the person, reader, and learner that I am today, from the math teachers who helped me during lunch breaks to the English teachers that encouraged me to dig deeper into our reading materials, but it does not escape me how loaded the question of teaching is.
It’s inextricably connected to the fact that 1.) it is in the humanities and 2.) that I am a woman. Teaching has largely been a field dominated by women, and the fact that it has to do with nurturing an aspect of children is also an aspect that tells me how people view Literature, and by extension, the humanities itself.
It’s not like I don’t have experience with teaching. My first job ever was as a writing tutor at Los Angeles City College, my community college at the time. I continued tutoring high-school students after I graduated from university because I found the act of helping them express themselves fulfilling. But I think that it’s quite telling that everyone thinks that I’ll be a teacher (but never a professor) when I tell them about my forever love. They become even more confused when I tell them about how I’m more interested in publishing literature than teaching it. They don’t quite understand the work that happens in the background before a piece of writing is shared with an audience. They don’t understand why I would rather help a writer than write myself.
I don’t really have to explain myself, but I have an intense and pathological need to do so, so I point them to the back of any book.
People often skip the acknowledgements at the end of books, but I always like to read them. The book feels incomplete if I don’t. While the author wrote the book, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the book would not exist in its current form without people who help behind the scenes, such as agents, editors, sensitivity readers, even just people from the author’s personal lives who supported them throughout their writing journey.
Writing is not the isolating journey people imagine it to be; I think these acknowledgements are proof of that. And while it would be wonderful to somehow gather the courage and commitment to write something substantial myself, I’ve also always wanted to be so helpful, so supportive, so necessary that someone felt they had to thank me in such a lasting way.
I believe that Sundress does that very important task of supporting people that the publishing industry often overlooks in favor of good business. What drew me to this press was not just that it supported marginalized communities, but that it actively does its part to uplift and platform those voices. For publishing to truly be diverse and for people like future students reading assigned materials and walking away with a new perspective on literature, it is essential to continue this task.
So, I wouldn’t mind being a teacher. But I think my path lies elsewhere.
Alexandra Bautista (she/her) is an intern at Sundress Publications who hails from sunny California. Armed with an expensive piece of cardstock (her UCLA English degree) and way too much anxiety for one human body to hold, she approaches her lifelong love of reading with a perspective that is both analytical and emotional. Due to her background in tutoring high-school-aged and college-level students in writing, she believes that inside of everyone is a writer waiting to share their inner voice. Hopefully someday that will include her… whenever she gets over her writer’s block, that is. Which, likely, very possibly, maybe, might be never.
Cavar’s sophomore poetry collection, Differential Diagnosis(Northwestern University Press, 2026) is a visceral dissection of postmodern anxieties through the lens of trans* and Mad experiences. Reminiscent of Joanna Klink and Lyn Hejinian’s surreal work and, more broadly, a long lineage of Mad literature, the collection also uses quotes and footnotes to engage in conversation with writers like Michel Foucault, Jos Charles, Kim Hyesoon, T. S. Eliot, and Evelyn Berry. The body of the work both structurally and thematically expresses the gravity of grief, lamenting lost time and the limitations of language. The speaker uses sullen puns to play with language despite resignation and fatigue after enduring years of obscurity. The voice of this collection is a prolonged exhalation of exile woven through a variety of loose forms and unconventional syntax, the solemnity inextricable from the structure. In other words, the form augments the content, a harmony that consistent and effective collections aspire to accomplish.
The primary arc of Differential Diagnosis, as alluded to by its title and eponymous series of poems, involves postmodern and metapoetic anxieties about language. In “Substitution Poem,” the speaker is distanced from the self, a dissociated caricature or “stick figure… in crisis” (Cavar 29). They tend to be assertive but not authoritative, with an unspoken hope that the reader will respect and affirm declarations of a self that has been chronically undermined and underestimated. This “stick figure” frequently slips into compulsive disclaimers and self-sabotage as self-defense, only rarely snapping under pressure with exclamations like, “I am sick / to fuck of being sensible!” (10). In “Envy Narrative,” they briefly admit, “I have myself to blame. She can’t / Be trusted” then turn to the reader for support, asking, “Do you understand?” as if anticipating revulsion or rejection (42).
Similar self-deprecation appears in “My First Crime” with the lamentation, “I am have never been cage-free. Always compensating for something” (40). Under relentless external and internal scrutiny, the speaker eventually crumples into humility—“What exactly is required of me, I can’t / do it… Am I worth all I am capable of doing. This cruel / Knowledge” (Cavar 58). This is a striking example of the quintessential metapoetic voice, both self-referential and confessional, resigning to the shortcomings of the self. This collection’s place in postmodern poetry, especially trans* and Mad lineages, is evident in the confessional nature of these self-portrait poems.
The urgent insecurities of Differential Diagnosis orbit around the act of naming. From a trans* and Mad perspective, gender and sexuality markers and medical diagnoses can be both a constructive and inadequate constraint. Even selecting a new name for oneself is a fraught journey of grappling with language and the self, its own microcosm of metapoetics. In a rare moment of conviction, the speaker expresses early on, “I believe I have / No name but rather perhaps dent or event… This thing / sends me into dark places / where the nameless live” (8). To be nameless is undesirable and disorienting, associated with trauma (“dent or event”). Who holds the power of naming—the self or the other? Is naming an internal or external process?
These questions and more guide us through the central conflict. One possible resolution is, “Name goes to its grave a secret. / Name is anecdotal / evidence” (49). A name can be a subject, a proper noun, a pronoun, a narrative. It can be fleeting. It can be dismissed. The eighth poem in the titular “Differential Diagnosis” sequence narrates, “You spot my wrong a while / away. You may / Get even to name it, for good / or ill” (31). The act of articulating and labeling is a coveted privilege. The speaker goes as far as to say, “I am helpless in the face / Of my own legitimacy,” identifying their own powerlessness to externally imposed labels. However, as many disabled and Mad folks know, a diagnosis can also provide clarity in suffering and even a redemptive relief that one’s experiences are not imagined but recognized. In other words, “my name is the sick of my illness. i am good / and named” (45).
In correspondence with the omnipresent dread and desire surrounding the act of naming, the collection delays assigning any specific terminology to its speaker. The word “autism” does not appear until halfway through the book, compared to “a backward / flower,” both natural and unnatural (37). The term “anorexia nervosa” is explicitly absent for even longer, and begrudgingly personified as something that “struggles / to name itselves” followed by a footnote innuendo calling it “That big / bad word” (50-51). Having pursued and yet postponed these diagnoses, the speaker clarifies, “I am not sure I believe in all the things wrong with me” (32). Presumably, possessing the terminology to name their experiences did not provide the desired clarity, instead lending them to experience further neglect and shame: “Being disordered is a manner / of being out of order, that is, insequential, that is, inconsequential” (59).
The idea of wrongness and disorder expands from the specificity of diagnosis until it begins to degrade the definitions by which we understand reality. In yet another installment of introspection, the speaker tells us, “I don’t know / about you, but I was born in the wrong / episteme.” (18). This collection and its narrator dwell outside the realm of accepted knowledge, condemned to feel defective and dysfunctional compared to an unknown other. Structurally, the poem uses enjambment and spacing to emphasize a crucial confession: “I don’t know.” In another piece, a doctor tells the speaker, “‘No theory will protect you here. / Redemarcate the boundaries / of your knowing’” (60). The poem frames this sage wisdom as professional advice, both relevant within the context of diagnosis and the broader, metapoetic contemplations about redefining knowledge.
Another aspect of naming to consider is gender identity and the queering of language. At one point, the speaker self-identifies as “a victim of the / pronouns” (34). The consistent voice of the collection establishes a new grammar of gender, playing with visual text through homonyms, capitalization, abbreviation, and even font size. Which elements are interchangeable and fluid? Which are rigid and therefore brittle? Readers must parse through unconventional syntax as if they are hearing English for the first time, daring them to participate in meaning-making. The audience is invited to suspend their disbelief and become a co-conspirator in the speaker’s testimony: “Can you help me pass into a new mythology?” (6). This intimate dynamic later becomes a demand: “Get my name and fuck me / with it. / I delight with delicious / Literacy” (31). In the world of Differential Diagnosis, the act of description is inherently sensual.
This sensuality is facilitated by both the anatomical and metaphorical body, with a recurring motif of “holes” representing anything from emptiness, orifices, wounds, and gaps, but also etymologically connected to themes of “holiness” and “wholeness.” Is the speaker being literal or figurative in saying, “I have… many / unofficial holes” (18)? Does this refer to trans* corporeality that defies conventional labels, or something more metaphysical? One poem is titled “You are holy, your [Name*] is holy, etc.” and another says, “i am wholly the wait of the name” (54). This play on words creates a paradox of presence and absence, “weight” and “wait,” what is included in a name and what is left out, what language can do and what it fails to do. One humorous yet rueful scene finds the speaker “trying to fill a basket. / But there’s / You guessed it / A hole” (66). The physical and metaphysical are reunited when one poem reckons with “The backbreaking / Labor of being born, nay, / Of being known,” a state of intimacy that comes at great cost to the ego (25).
The ambient caution regarding labels and “being known” is not unwarranted. One poem hypothesizes, “Let’s say I’m a monster. Say poetry made me this way. Let’s say words / are monsters trying to become sentences. Let’s say it’s pathological” (21). This passage sheds light on the pathologized pathos of trans* and disabled bodies. The motifs of monsters and marginalization appear throughout the text. “The Ways of the Monster” is declarative and abrupt: “We are in the gutter. / Someone narrows the aperture” (17). The window of inclusion is closing, and the oppressor is nameless and therefore blameless. The ambiguity and anonymity of “we” and “someone” nevertheless establish a dichotomy. Who is included and who is excluded?
Despite grappling with an ostracized existence, the speaker expresses a profound longing for life, imploring the universe to “send me to that great sad / struggling world of things” (15). The collection contemplates the cost versus capacity of language in a postmodern world, with the apostrophic prayer, “Name don’t kill me just bring me someplace / I can live” (49). The speaker comes to terms with the “many unknowns… and even more / diversions” that “made me everything but dead and in / that way twice as killable,” acknowledging that being open and available to a full life renders one vulnerable to exploitation and harm (19). The collection even goes as far as to declare, “Being born wrong is a gift” (48). This bittersweet philosophy manages to reconcile the speaker’s pain from a life in the margins of madness and queerness with everything their identity has illuminated. They resolve “to stick to horrors within my / comprehension” and accept their physical and spiritual limitations, “because to end the bad’s / to end the whole thing” (63). The ideas of “wrongness” and “wholeness” become one.
Reading this collection as a trans* and Mad poet with many of the same thematic obsessions, I found Differential Diagnosis to be a highly cohesive and effective deconstruction of how we attempt and sometimes fail to relate to one another as humans of intersectional experiences. These poems simultaneously wrestle with, transcend, and concede to the boundaries of the written word. They “invent a value / -system as consistent / as nonsensical” (25). Just like its author, this work is a paradox incarnate that resists labeling, a bittersweet celebration of complexity and the human condition (25).
Zoe Korte is a queer and mad poet whose work has appeared in Roi Fainéant, Maudlin House, new words {press}, Foglifter, Room Magazine, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere. They have earned degrees in English, Spanish, and Ancient Greek from the University of Missouri. They live with their partner in St. Louis, where they work for Sundress Publications and the Missouri History Museum. You can find them on Instagram @zoekpoetry or Bluesky @mostlymosspoetry.
I started reading seriously in college, but I began telling stories much earlier, in elementary school. Before I knew enough Chinese characters to write stories, I filled my notebooks with drawings of imaginary worlds inspired by the fantasy stories I loved—Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, World of Warcraft, and Final Fantasy. I even invited my friends to become characters in those worlds. I have no idea where those notebooks are now, but I still remember the immense joy of inventing stories.
As I grew older, I discovered English as a more adequate language for my storytelling. I dreamed in Chinese before I learned to write. English became the language through which I learned how to shape those dreams into fiction. Its precision, syntactic flexibility, and ability to render subtle shifts in time and perspective opened up new possibilities in my writing. Learning to write in English not only expanded my imagination but also gave me the tools to transform imagination into literature.
I took my first introductory creative writing class during my freshman year at NYU and wrote a series of memoir vignettes. That class was the first time I realized writing could be a lifelong pursuit. Around the same time, I began reading literary fiction. I was captivated by William Faulkner’s nonlinear manipulation of time, drawn into Fyodor Dostoevsky’s morally turbulent world, fascinated by Orhan Pamuk’s intricate labyrinths of memory and identity, and impressed by Alice Munro’s expansive portraits of Ontario. Their works reshaped my understanding of what fiction could do.
These writers encouraged me to ask questions that continue to guide my own work: How do we define ourselves? Where is the boundary between the self and others? How do we navigate the tensions between languages, cultures, and histories in an increasingly interconnected world?
Today, I am committed to writing about the Asian diaspora. Inspired by writers such as Yiyun Li, Kyle Liang, and Shangyang Fang, I explore displacement, belonging, and cultural inheritance through fiction. As an Asian immigrant in the United States, I am still searching for my own place within American society. That ongoing search shapes my writing and motivates my desire to support emerging writers and help bring their voices into the world.
Yuanhao Lin is a fiction writer from Beijing, China, and an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at Columbia University. Their work has appeared in Breakwater Review. In 2025, they were shortlisted for the StoryQuarterly Fiction Prize and the Madison Review Chris O’Malley Prize in Fiction. When they’re not writing, they enjoy cooking and playing Mahjong. This summer, they plan to read W. G. Sebald and learn how to make Schweinshaxe.
Abi Pollokoff’s night myths • • before the body(Red Hen Press, 2025) is a tour de force of inventive language. She constructs an incredibly original poetic landscape via fragmentation, punctuation, dichotomy, and white space—one saturated with feminist critique and riveting social commentary. Pollokoff’s writing is extraordinary and surreal, carrying readers into an intimate meditation around the multiplicities of womanhood.
Like rainfall, the atmosphere of night myths • • before the body is simultaneously staccato and seamless. While reading, I was immediately struck by the innovative creation of compound words that endlessly dot these pages. Within one of the first poems, “wildflower mythology,” words like “stemwrapped,” “soilsoaked,” “goldthreaded,” and “shadowplucked” surprised and delighted me. Although none of these are in the dictionary officially, they felt so deeply accurate, visually-clear, and aesthetically coherent that I would easily vouch for their inclusion. Pollokoff here puts forward her own mythological voice with these words; she establishes her artistic voice and epistemological vision early in the collection to articulate her own becoming. Borrowing from the compound word “wildflower” itself, Pollokoff brilliantly sees patterns already existent in language and generously extends them to other natural phenomena.
Pollokoff’s structure, ordering, and paginal layout are also designed with curiosity, attentiveness, and care. With the eye of an architect and the mind of an artist in communion with her world, she places the sequence “lilies & these eroded” in the center of the book. Pollokoff writes:
weigh the phrase against its foliage: so much vastness in the gasping roots so much in the gasping tides • here & over that way here & over that way & here & here & here &.
Her gorgeous language describing lilies on a shoreline brings together earthy diction like foliage and roots and water imagery. The open vowels in “gasping tides” connect to the vastness of nature. The repeated phrases in the second stanza excerpted above mirror immemorial natural cycles. In the notes section, Pollokoff notes her intention to match “the nadir of the speaker’s emotional self-consideration” with “the vertex of the book’s ‘v.’” The foresight to be mindful of the physical artifact of her book with the speaker’s interiority is nothing short of remarkable. Pollokoff beautifully gives her speaker a chance to refract, reflect, and grow across the second half.
I resonate strongly with “particular reminders when prayers for the body aren’t enough” for its reflection on womanhood, and more generally, living with a body that changes. Pollokoff’s poignant questioning include vivid images to capture philosophical reflection; for example, “it’s not a question of streets or piano keys / it’s not a question to fill veins with tendrils of curved bark” and “is the body swallowed in fabric to hide / or to hold it.” Anyone who has selected particular articles of clothing based on feeling insecure or ashamed of their body will recognize this speaker’s experience. The title also evokes the social norm to express ‘thoughts and prayers’ instead of offer action to help someone in need. Pollokoff’s poem is a reminder full of smaller reminders for those who wish they were a different shape or who are struggling with changes in their body; she conjures fruits, wrists, cityscapes, and muscles to help readers towards self-acceptance by sitting with their beauty.
The poem “to forest is to hide a woman” also touches on the experience of holding self-doubt and self-love. Pollokoff writes:
i swarm. myself to be a. body. to become. a woman i am. leeching woman lisping & claiming. a name. for which i do. not ask i do not ask. to woman i do not want. to quiver i. want. to know what my insides are. i want. to know what. is a woman.
i want to know how. my insides are i. want to catch the dripping. light of stained. glass hanging from. rafters. & drink it into. me. hold it. hold it close to. breezes &. sing a little. in the light. don’t make light.
Such wants—to be known, to be understood—are universal. Pollokoff’s fragmented syntax makes a stop and go effect, mirroring the thought process of someone holding uncertainty and desire inside them simultaneously. The periods force me to read more slowly, and through that adjustment, I’m able to recognize more multiplicity of meaning from these words. For example, there would be less room for curiosity in the opening of the second stanza excerpted above if it simply read: “i want to know how my insides are. i want to catch the dripping light of stained glass hanging from rafters…” Because of Pollokoff’s deconstructed and then reconstructed sentence structure, phrases like “my insides are i” echo more clearly, loudly. Moments of defamiliarization with phrases like “light of stained” also piqued my curiosity, making me want to read again and again.
Pollokoff’s commitment to sustaining such an inventive, clever, and transformational poetic across the entirety of night myths • • before the body makes this thoughtfully crafted collection a standout in contemporary poetry, and one I will return to many times. Her unique diction and deep care for humanness will reach those looking for both a cerebral and emotional reading experience.
Livia Meneghin (she/her) is the author of feathering and Honey in My Hair. She is Cofounder and Managing Editor at Two Cardinals Literary. At Sundress Publications, she serves as Assistant Chapbook Editor. Livia has been awarded recognition from the Academy of American Poets, Breakwater Review, The Room Magazine, the City of Boston, and elsewhere. Since earning her MFA in poetry, she teaches writing and literature at the collegiate level. She is a cancer survivor.
