2021 Poetry Series
Neon Hemlock Press is pleased to announce the works chosen for our 2021 Poetry Series: mouth by jo reyes-boitel and who is owed springtime by Rasha Abdulhadi. Editor Saida Agostini chose works that confront the cost of survival.
Agostini chose mouth because it “offers a precise accounting of patriarchal violence, a complicated constellation that cannot be cut down or anesthetized for anyone's comfort. This work is a dare, a challenge to those who would rather turn away from truth. As they write, Those who try to love me cannot swallow my entirety. If you are lucky you will choke on my hips. We are lucky to be blessed with this witness.”
Regarding who is owed springtime, Agostini found that, “these poems are an astonishing treatise on desire, and the startlingly thin line between fear and pleasure. Rasha Abdulhadi fearlessly plumbs the contours of multigenerational trauma, joy and pleasure, and comes back singing with the lessons of a hard won journey: I learned what the light of giving too much reveals.”
Learn more about both authors here.
Each of these chapbooks will be printed in a limited run of 100, shipping in May 2021.
Edited 5/20/21 to add: While we are excited about the arrival of these chapbooks, the urgent movement for liberation in Palestine continues. As an offering to Palestinian communities and all in solidarity, Rasha is releasing their out-of-print 2017 microchapbook, Shell Houses (The Head & the Hand Press). You can download it here—it's free, now and forever, like Palestine should be. -dr
