The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Iguana Iguana by Caylin Capra-Thomas

This selection, chosen by guest editor Alyse Bensel, is from Iguana Iguana by Caylin Capra-Thomas, released by Deep Vellum in 2022.

Passage

It’s hard to tell what will be important. The river
is high again and so are the teenagers encrusting
its edges, beady-eyed and black-clad, sideways
glancing, suspicious as crows. Each in the cluster
a dead version of yourself: one scratching peace
signs into the dirt with her toe. One singing
ugly. One poking a drowned worm, expressionless.
And you stand apart, head cocked, remembering
that the French for to happen also means to arrive,
that sometimes we say deceased when we mean
departed. The obscure chorus of your own life
keeps cawing into the diamond dark, under the roaring
of each body you inhabit, the waters, the others
you’ve flocked to, even when all you can hear
are your own hard swallows, or the sweet shriek
of those far-off trains you suspect are coming
to claim you. To lay open the hills you haven’t seen.

Caylin Capra-Thomas is the author of Iguana Iguana (Deep Vellum), as well as the chapbook Inside My Electric City (YesYes Books), and her poems and nonfiction have appeared in venues like Pleiades, Copper Nickel, New England Review, 32 Poems, Mississippi Review, and elsewhere. The recipient of fellowships and residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Studios of Key West, she was the 2018-2020 poet-in-residence at Idyllwild Arts Academy. She lives in Columbia, Missouri, where she studies nonfiction, poetry, and ecocriticism in Mizzou’s PhD program, but she calls New England home.

Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree and teaches at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference. 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Faraway Places by Teow Lim Goh

This selection, chosen by guest editor Alyse Bensel, is from Faraway Places by Teow Lim Goh, released by Diode Editions in 2022.

Petals

after Jay DeFeo

Nude, you stand before the painting
you will sculpt for another
seven years — your eyes are closed,

your feet apart, your arms spread
like wings about to rise. Rays that you
will chisel into petals

blaze from your body at
the center of a star, the beginnings
of a rose breaking forth —

Teow Lim Goh is the author of two poetry collections, Islanders (2016) and Faraway Places (2021), and an essay collection Western Journeys (2022). Her essays, poetry, and criticism have been featured in The Georgia Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books, PBS NewsHour, and The New Yorker.

Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree and teaches at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference. 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Faraway Places by Teow Lim Goh

This selection, chosen by guest editor Alyse Bensel, is from Faraway Places by Teow Lim Goh, released by Diode Editions in 2022.

Autobiography

And we will not remember everything.
We invent to fill the gaps, to make a story
with which we can live.

We invent: this is who I am.

Teow Lim Goh is the author of two poetry collections, Islanders (2016) and Faraway Places (2021), and an essay collection Western Journeys (2022). Her essays, poetry, and criticism have been featured in The Georgia Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books, PBS NewsHour, and The New Yorker.

Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree and teaches at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference. 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Faraway Places by Teow Lim Goh

This selection, chosen by guest editor Alyse Bensel, is from Faraway Places by Teow Lim Goh, released by Diode Editions in 2022.

Butterfly Pavilion

I stand before the cocoons, waiting
for a twitch in the shells, a crack revealing
a colorful wing. There are none.

The cocoons are pinned
to cork boards, each dangling
from its tip, ordered
by species and country of origin.

Some look like snails.
Some look like tiny black bugs.
Some are the green of the first leaves of spring.

Nothing today.

I turn to the butterflies
around me, broken
out of their shells, dotting the forest
with their bright colors.

They flit from flowers to leaves, pause
on branches, their legs arched,
their wings folded. Once

they lift their wings, they launch into flight.

Teow Lim Goh is the author of two poetry collections, Islanders (2016) and Faraway Places (2021), and an essay collection Western Journeys (2022). Her essays, poetry, and criticism have been featured in The Georgia Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books, PBS NewsHour, and The New Yorker.

Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree and teaches at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference. 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Faraway Places by Teow Lim Goh

This selection, chosen by guest editor Alyse Bensel, is from Faraway Places by Teow Lim Goh, released by Diode Editions in 2022.

Island

Before I was born, the sea rolled up
to my grandparents’ house, but the view
I knew was the strip of asphalt

beyond the barbed wire. The garden
was overgrown with mango, guava,
and jackfruit we picked ripe

off the branches, the sole rambutan
that could not bear fruit, the coconut
decaying from within. I caught

butterflies. I flicked my wrist, pressed
their small brown wings. They left
skeins of powder on my fingers. Then

I let them go. I imagined the sea
rose and flooded the garden. The coconut
fell and bobbed in the waves, too dry

and hard to eat, the shell broken
only by a knife.

Teow Lim Goh is the author of two poetry collections, Islanders (2016) and Faraway Places (2021), and an essay collection Western Journeys (2022). Her essays, poetry, and criticism have been featured in The Georgia Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books, PBS NewsHour, and The New Yorker.

Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree and teaches at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference. 

Sundress Reads: Review of Asylum

Caroline Cottom’s Asylum (Main Street Rag, 2022) is a soul stirring collection of poems recounting patriarchal violence and its direct connection to the frequency of institutionalization of women in the early 1900’s. This collection tackles the age-old misogynistic term “hysteria” in such an unapologetic way it keeps us flipping page after page to the end, especially with the form of poems like “Asylum 1,” where Cottom deliberately spaces out the words in each stanza to illustrate the experience of looking at the artifacts from the asylum captured by photographer Jon Crispin. This deliberate spacing becomes apparent again in “Girls Underwater,” where she recounts her mother’s plea to have the police called due to the father’s violence. In this piece, she also spaces out the words along the page to imitate the uneasiness associated with hysteria, or fear. 

Interestingly enough, Cottom’s poem “Causes of Mental Illness” list the satirical causes in a perfectly centered page each time, contradicting the erraticism of mental illness itself. This thematically pairs well with the poem before, “Elegy for Cousin Libby,” where Cottom delves into the shock therapy her cousin endured while at asylums in Tennessee and New York. The striking part of this poem is that a piece with so much pain is finely contained on the page as if beaten straight, resembling the one-size-fits-all approach to “treatment” that often left patients robotic and terrified; scared straight. 

Along with the heartwrenching retelling of Cottom’s traumatizing childhood with her sexually abusive father, she unabashedly recounts the history of her experience growing up as a young woman in the 60s before the Equal Rights Amendment of 1972. It only becomes apparent that Cottom is able to have some minor bodily autonomy in “Appetite,” where she reads Nobokov’s Lolita in disgust, but refuses to bring a friend for her father’s tendencies to seep into. Instead, she chooses to be the only one; a selfless act, though gut-wrenching. It’s also incredible how Cottom switches tone throughout the entirety of the collection to show herself growing older and wiser. The tone shift between “Daddy’s Suitcase” (5) and “How I Remembered” (56) stands in stark comparison between the lens of being a little girl and not understanding, to being older and understanding everything. Going from “Two weeks later a russet smear / on a shirt / in his suitcase. Shalimar. Rouge. Blonde hairs / on his suit,” to “In a college basement, a man counsels three women, one after the other. As fate has it, each speaks of being molested as a child by a man she knew well. The third stands in front, lower lip quivering—” is such an excellent way to tell us time has passed without telling us. It’s clear that Cottom is an experienced writer who knows what she’s doing, and her recollection of her experiences is life altering. 

The continuous obituary poem throughout is also a gut punch. “Obituary” shows Cottom unflinchingly recounting what her father was like, and how he treated women in general: her, her sister, her mother, and his many paramours. 

Cottom lists candidly from the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum’s late 1800s hospital records in her recurring poem “Causes of Mental Illness:” “doubt about mother’s ancestors, jealousy, mental excitement, greediness, women, egotism, remorse” (21). The use of the actual text here truly illustrates how bizarre it was that these were considered reasons to institutionalize women (when in reality, it was sexism and an overall hatred of women). It became apparent quickly through Asylum that you could be taken away for virtually anything. The deep empathy woven throughout how Caroline talks about the various asylums (now museums) she visited and/or researched in her life truly stands out—the Willard Asylum in New York, one in Camarillo, California, and one in Northfield, Minnesota. 

Asylum is not only wonderfully written poetry, but a historic analysis into America’s dark history with hospitalizing women who refuse to live in submission. And to all who experienced such horrors at the hands of the people who were supposed to be trusted, it is a simple I see you.

Asylum is available from Main Street Rag

Lyra Thomas is a black nonbinary poet from the St Louis area, currently residing in Carbondale, IL for their MFA in Poetry from Southern Illinois University, which is also their alma mater. They received their BA in Creative Writing in 2018. Lyra enjoys reading/writing poetry, curating Spotify playlists, and cuddling with their cats Max and Silver.

Sundress Academy for the Arts Presents May Reading Series

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is pleased to announce the guests for the May installment of our reading series– writers Mordecia Martin and Shlagha Borah, comedian Liz Brooks, and musician Redd! Join us on Sunday, May 28th at Pretentious Beer Co. from 1:00-3:00PM.

Photo of Mordecai Martin

Mordecai Martin is a queer, Mad, Ashkenazi Jewish writer, an aspiring translator of Yiddish and Spanish, and a fifth generation New Yorker with ties to Philadelphia and Mexico City. In his fiction, he strives to chronicle and capture the peculiarities of voice, the miraculous nature of event, and the depths and edges of Jewish humanity. In his non-fiction he writes to explore family, history, place, and mental illness. His creative non-fiction has appeared in Catapult Magazine, Longleaf Review, Peach Magazine, Autofocus Lit, Anti-Heroin Chic Magazine and The Hypocrite Reader. His fiction has been featured in Identity Theory, Timber Journal, X-Ray Lit, Gone Lawn, Knight’s Library Magazine, Funicular, and Sortes. He blogs at mordecaimartin.net and tweets and instagrams @mordecaipmartin. He also conducts interviews for the Poetry Question.

Shlagha Borah (she/her) is a queer poet and mental health activist from Assam, India. She is the co-founder of Pink Freud, a mental health collective working to make mental health services accessible in India. She currently attends the MFA program in Poetry at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her work centers on parentification, grief, trauma and their intersection as experienced by female bodies and appears in or is forthcoming in Longleaf Review, Rogue Agent, Nonbinary Review, Ninety Seven Poems (Terribly Tiny Tales & Penguin), and elsewhere. Twitter: @shlaghaborah Instagram: @shlaghab

Comedian Liz Brooks has performed across the south East for several years, opening for names like Geoff Tate, and Kevin McDonald. Liz is also a resident and house emcee for Rhinestone Fest as well as being a regular contributor to the BRB podcast. Follow @lizthebruh for more content.

Photo of Redd

Redd is a Knoxville native and former high school English, Yearbook, and Journalism teacher. She also coached cross country and track.  In 2021 Redd’s students pushed her to audition for American Idol, and she placed Top 40. She is now working alongside Gavin, Katie, and Colleen to make music her full time gig.

This event is brought to you in part by a grant provided by the Tennessee Arts Commission. Find out about the important work they do here.

Our community partner for May is the Tennessee Equality Project. The Tennessee Equality Project (TEP) advocates for the equal rights of LGBTQ people in Tennessee. TEP do this through legislative advocacy– meaning they lobby the Tennessee General Assembly and local governments around the state. When there is an important federal issue, like anti-LGBTQ adoption issue language in legislation, TEP helps make your voice heard with your federal officials.

The TEP Foundation provides a variety of educational and organizing programming. They have registered 353 voters online since October 2017. TEP provides workshops called Advocacy 101 across the state so that more people can engage their elected officials. They monitor and analyze state legislation related to the LGBTQ community, gather stories about the impact of state preemption of local government and provide public education on the issue, and hold Boro Pride in Murfreesboro annually, which now attracts over 4000 participants. Their Tennessee Open For Business program recognizes companies that do not discriminate against their employees or customers on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Learn more about the work the Tennessee Equality Project does here!

Sundress Academy for the Arts Presents “Writing Around the Wound of Estrangement”

Promotional Image

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “Writing Around the Wound of Estrangement,” a workshop led by Lindsey Danis on May 10, 2023, from 6-7:30 PM. This event will be held over Zoom. Participants can access the event at tiny.utk.edu/sundress (password: safta).

This 90-minute generative workshop will look at how we talk about estrangement and, more critically, what is left unsaid. We’ll examine the landscape of estrangement: Why do relationships fracture? Who is primarily affected? Whose voices are elevated in discussions of estrangement, and whose are silenced? We’ll use Jane Alison’s “Meander, Spiral, Explore” to consider the narrative shapes best suited to estrangement stories. What structures explain what often feels untranslatable? How do we give meaning to this wound when it requires we write about painful material, regrettable behaviors, or family secrets? We will read excerpts from Cheryl Strayed and MB Caschetta to unpack the narrative choices writers make, and what we believe this wound reveals or conceals about us. Generative writing prompts will allow writers to examine this topic in a supportive group environment. Writers will be encouraged (but not required) to share.

Picture of Lindsey Danis

Lindsey Danis is a queer writer of fiction and essays on travel, nature, belonging, and LGBTQ identity. Lindsey’s writing has appeared in Longreads, Catapult, Hobart, Barzakh and elsewhere, and received a notable mention in Best American Travel Writing. Lindsey is the creative nonfiction editor at Atlas + Alice and runs the queer outdoor travel blog QueerAdventurers. Lindsey has a BA from Vassar College, MFA from Emerson College, and is an alumni of SAFTA, Tin House and forthcoming TA at The Writer’s Hotel. Explore more of Lindsey’s work at lindseydanis.com or via Twitter (@lindseydanis) or Instagram (@lindsey.danis.writer).

While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, those who are able and appreciative may make donations directly to Lindsey Danis via Venmo: @Lindsey-Danis or via Paypal: lindsey.danis@gmail.com

This workshop is brought to you in part by a grant provided by the Tennessee Arts Commission. Find out about the important work they do here.

Sundress Academy for the Arts Presents May Poetry Xfit

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present Poetry Xfit hosted by  Emory Night. This generative workshop event will take place on Sunday, May 21 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!

Emory Night is a queer author from East Tennessee. They are currently a senior at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and are working on getting their bachelor’s in creative writing. They have worked as an intern for both Sundress Publications and SAFTA. They have been published in The Phoenix, a literary magazine at the University of Tennessee. During their free time, you’ll find them hanging out with their cats, playing Dungeons and Dragons, or playing video games.

Thank you to the Tennessee Arts Commission for making this event possible. Find out more about the important work that they do here.

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. Our community partner for May is the Tennessee Equality Project. The Tennessee Equality Project (TEP) advocates for the equal rights of LGBTQ people in Tennessee. TEP do this through legislative advocacy– meaning they lobby the Tennessee General Assembly and local governments around the state. When there is an important federal issue, like anti-LGBTQ adoption issue language in legislation, TEP helps make your voice heard with your federal officials.

The TEP Foundation provides a variety of educational and organizing programming. They have registered 353 voters online since October 2017. TEP provides workshops called Advocacy 101 across the state so that more people can engage their elected officials. They monitor and analyze state legislation related to the LGBTQ community, gather stories about the impact of state preemption of local government and provide public education on the issue, and hold Boro Pride in Murfreesboro annually, which now attracts over 4000 participants. Their Tennessee Open For Business program recognizes companies that do not discriminate against their employees or customers on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Learn more about the work the Tennessee Equality Project does here!

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Faraway Places by Teow Lim Goh

This selection, chosen by guest editor Alyse Bensel, is from Faraway Places by Teow Lim Goh, released by Diode Editions in 2022.

Faraway Places

Desire makes us face ourselves. The selves
we keep at bay want to break out of our bodies.

I wonder if the saying that women cannot read maps is meant
to keep us from venturing out on our own.

Maps are guides to our dreams,
where we want to go and who we want to be.

I heard a crack that sounded
like a thunderbolt, but it was not the sky.

Dust blows in the wind to faraway places, washed
out to sea and rolled back to shore.

Maps hold the stories of our lives, a record
of journeys into the unknown.

I leave it for the waves to reclaim, the sand to fill,
the hole I make in my wake.

Teow Lim Goh is the author of two poetry collections, Islanders (2016) and Faraway Places (2021), and an essay collection Western Journeys (2022). Her essays, poetry, and criticism have been featured in The Georgia Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books, PBS NewsHour, and The New Yorker.

Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree and teaches at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference.