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TWELVE Now Available for Preorder!

Twelve: Poems Inspired by the Brothers Grimm

Life has been pretty overwhelming of late, so much so that I haven’t had time to announce some pretty exciting news.

My new chapbook of prose poetry — Twelve: Poems Inspired by the Brother’s Grimm Fairy Tale — is available for preorder at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Indiebound.

Twelve is a retelling of the Brothers Grimm fairytale “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.” Bewitching and beguiling, this short series of linked poems takes the reader to the underrealm and back, following the stories of twelve princesses and their life after the magic shoes.

“Andrea Blythe’s collection of the retold (and often feminist) Brothers Grimm fairytale, ‘The Twelve Dancing Princesses,’ is a breath of air at the bottom of the ocean. It’s not only fresh, but it’s so different and unique that it deserves multiple reads. One of my favorite lines in the book is also something we should all ask ourselves, ‘Do you mean it?’”

— Joanna C. Valente

Honestly, it’s been a delight working with Interstellar Flight Press to bring this chapbook into being. From the editing process to the cover design to the layout, this has been a wonder collaborative process, resulting in a book that I’m incredibly proud of writing.

Twelve is scheduled to launch this September (assuming all goes well, considering the current world situation).

Preorder and Get Swag

If obtaining a copy of my shiny new book is not enough of an incentive by itself, Interstellar Flight Press is offering swag to the first 50 people who preorder. The swag bag includes gorgeous red-edged, hand-numbered broadside with lines from from the book, as well as stickers and various surprise items.

However, if you can’t afford to purchase the book, I totally understand. Times are tough right now, after all.

Buying a book is not the only way support authors. So, here are a few other ways that you can help out:.

  1. Shout Out the Book – Tell your friends about it, share it on Facebook, Twitter, or wherever. Word of mouth is major ways that people find new books.
  2. Request the Book at Your Local Library and/or Bookstore – Asking for the book at a local store lets them know that there is interest in the book. As a result, they’re more likely to stock it on their shelves. Same with libraries.
  3. After You’ve Read the Book, Leave a Review on Amazon, Goodreads, or Elsewhere – As with all of these suggestions, leaving an honest review out there in the world helps spread the word about books.

Thank you so much for being a part of my community, for reading this blog, and for providing what support you can along the way.

May you continue to survive and thrive

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New Books in Poetry: The Lampblack Blue of Memory by Sarah Adleman

Sarah Aldman-The Lampblack Blue of Memory-My Mother Echoes

A new episode of the New Books in Poetry podcast is up, in which the fabulous Athena Dixon speaks with Sarah Adleman about her book The Lampblack Blue of Memory: My Mother Echoes (Tolsun Books, 2019).

Athena writes of the book:

Adleman’s collection, a gorgeous hybrid of poetry and memoir, is a journey through grief and forgiveness. The author’s debut book uses both the personal and the informative to examine and preserve the loss, grief, and cleansing set in motion by her mother’s death. She honors her mother not only in the crafting of these shared memories, but also in the actual formatting of the text itself. Adleman gives her mother voice by including her own work interwoven throughout the retelling. The author does not shy away from the heaviness of absence, her personal reaction to the events, and especially not the profound changes to her father. She unfurls these emotions in the light and scrubs away the haze. She leaves us with the “bliss at the core of our beings” and challenges us to walk beside her to the other side.

You can listen to the interview here or on the podcast app of your choice.

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New Books in Poetry: Mary Shelly Makes a Monster by Octavia Cade

Octavia Cade-Mary Shelley Makes a Monster

A new episode of the New Books in Poetry podcast is up. Despite some technical difficulties, I had a delightful conversation with Octavia Cade about her book, Mary Shelley Makes a Monster (Aqueduct Press, 2019).

In Octavia Cades’ brilliant collection of poetry Mary Shelley Makes a Monster, the famous author of Frankenstein crafts a creature out of ink, mirrors, and the remnants of her own heartbreak and sorrow. Abandoned and alone after Shelley’s death, the monster searches for a mother to fill her place. Its journey carries it across continents and time, visiting other female authors throughout the decades — Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Octavia Butler, and others. Pulling from the biographical accounts of these amazing authors, these poems beautifully examine the nature of art and creation, reading and consumption, and how monsters are really reflections of ourselves.

You can listen to the interview here or on the podcast app of your choice.

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New Books in Poetry: If Men, Then by Eliza Griswold

if men then by eliza griswold

A new episode of the New Books in Poetry podcast is up, in which the fabulous Athena Dixon speaks with Eliza Griswold about her book If Men, Then (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020).

“Eliza Griswold writes in Snow in Rome, “we hate being human,/depleted by absence.” In her latest poetry collection, If Men, Then (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), Griswold grapples with a world that is fracturing at its foundation. In this series of poems, all at once dark. humorous and questioning, the author moves from the familiar to the unjust to hope with a keen eye. She guides readers through a world that at times strips the humanness from our bones with embedded violence and disconnection, but also calls for us to reconnect by reminding us to be a bridge out among the flames.”

You can listen to the interview here or on the podcast app of your choice.

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New Books in Poetry: Soft Science by Franny Choi

Soft Science by Franny Choi
Author photo by Graham Cotten.

A new episode of the New Books in Poetry podcast is up. I had a delightful conversation with Franny Choi about her new book Soft Science (Alice James Books 2019).

Franny Choi’s book-length collection of poetry, Soft Science, explores queer, Asian American femininity through the lens of robots, cyborgs, and artificial intelligence. As she notes in this interview, “this book is a study of softness,” exploring feeling, vulnerability, and desire. How can you be tender and still survive in a hard and violent world? What does it mean to have desire when you yourself are made into an object of desire? What does it mean to have a body that bears the weight of history? Choi’s poetry contemplates such questions through the technology of poetic form.

Here is a little snippet from our discussion, in which Choi discusses the idea of speaking for the voiceless:

“Early in my writing career, I was really struck by the concept of being a voice for the voiceless. I think this has to do with being a young activist kid and realizing that having the ability to write and speak in a way that moved people was a privilege, and [I had] a desire to use that privledge for good. I think not that long after I encountered this concept it started to feel icky to want to speak for people that have mostly been called voiceless but aren’t — and [it became] much more important to highlight those voices rather than speaking for them. 

For someone who is politically minded and writer and is interested in the craft of persona work, I think it makes for a difficult space to know how to operate in, you know. So, I think that the ways I’ve tried to — at least in this book — manage that have been to kind of relocate the voiceless as a populace within myself, like what are the parts of me that feel unspoken for or unable to explain themselves through normal language. There’s a lot that is unspeakable within all of us. For me, I feel my job as a poet is to try to use poetry to use poetry to navigate those spaces.“

You can listen to the interview here or on the podcast app of your choice.

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