Description
a poem is a house
winner of the 2022 Arthur Smith Prize
by linda ravenswood
ISBN: 978-1-956440-65-2 paperback $18.95
ISBN: 978-1-956440-66-9 ebook $9.99
January 16, 2024
Linda Ravenswood’s magnificent [collection] a poem is a house is a work of address. It speaks to complex figures dwelling in the inscape and the outscape of the text. It acknowledges its imagination. The speaker and, perhaps, the writer and/or the reader are actively involved … floating, dissolving, life-making, jagged, transparent, transformative … These are some of the existential conditions that the work carries, [in] glaciers of text, broken into bodies of different shapes, densities, colors, rhythms, destinations, desires.—Juan Felipé Herrera, U.S. Poet Laureate (2015-2017) and author of Notes on the Assemblage
This book is a revelation. Ravenswood shows us that—a poem is a house—as well as a housefire, a history, a family, a stranger, a choir. Stunning poems such as “The children turn themselves into ICE” and “names of Malinche / names of her children” are full of command and compassion, grit and grace. This is a visionary urgency. I love this book.—Lee Herrick, California Poet Laureate and author of Scar and Flower
a poem is a house pushes against the borders of poetry to emphasize how all borders are a construct: geopolitical, literary, and personal. Each poem in this outstanding collection reinvents itself, employing a range of forms, such as visual poems and broken poetry cycles, to recreate vivid details of the speaker’s experiences as a Californian with mixed Indigenous, European, and Mexican ancestry. Readers experience a state of bardo, a sense of existing between states: between different cultures, between safety and violence, and perhaps most of all, between past and present. Like memory itself, these poems thrive on elision, repetition, and reversal. a poem is a house is a dazzling accomplishment that presents a new and unique poetic vision.—Charlotte Pence, 2022 Arthur Smith Prize Judge and author of Code
a poem is a house reminds me that we write with the ancestors and carriers of our collective experiences looking over our shoulders and giving us a voice to tell their stories. Sometimes we recognize that these stories are sometimes really our own. This poetry speaks to the alienation of a group of people, and the individuals themselves, from community, family, and often the self. The voice I hear is one fighting erasure and alienation from “the other society.” This society we view at a distance as we are separated from it by birth. The words in this collection of poetry suggest that some of us spend our lives pondering the justification for the distance while being told the reasons. The questions still remain unanswered as we move toward an inevitable death.—Francine Rodriguez, author of A Woman’s Story
linda ravenswood BFA MA, PhD abd is a poet and performance artist from Los Angeles. Her accolades include an Oxford Prize in Poetry (2022) and the Edwin Markham Prize in Poetry (2023). She is the founding editor of The Los Angeles Press, est. 2018, and the co-founder of the Poet Laureate program in Glendale, California. Her recent collections include Cantadora—letters from California (Eyewear London/The Black Spring Press Group, 2023), The Stan Poems (Pedestrian Press, 2022), Tlacuilx—Tongues in Quarantine (HINCHAS Press, 2021), and XLA Poets (HINCHAS Press, 2020). Find her at thelosangelespress.com6
kpdavis –
Linda’s poetry is powerful. That’s why it won Madville’s Arthur Smith Prize for a full-length poetry collection. I can’t wait to hear her perform it live.