Wild Nights

Kim Addonizio was born in 1954, and lives in Oakland, California. Her poetry books include The Philosopher’s Club (1994), Jimmy & Rita (1997), Tell Me (2000), What Is This Thing Called Love (2004), Lucifer at the Starlite (2009), My Black Angel: Blues Poems and Portraits (2014), Mortal Trash (2016), and her first UK publication, Wild Nights: New & Selected Poems (2015) from Bloodaxe. She has also published fiction, notably the novels Little Beauties (2005) and My Dreams Out in the Street (2007), and the short story collection The Palace of Illusions (2014), as well as a memoir, Bukowski in a Sundress: Confessions from a Writing Life (2016). She collaborated with Dorianne Laux on The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (1997), and published another poetry guide called Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within (2009). Her awards include two NEA Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the John Ciardi Lifetime Achievement Award. She has also been a presenter for BBC radio, and plays harmonica with Nonstop Beautiful Ladies, a word/music performance group. Her Wild Nights was launched with readings in Britain in 2015.

'Kim Addonizio's imagination is like a runaway train under perfect control. Nuanced, shaded and unshaded, her poems are bold, brave, respectful of the darkness, perfectly pitched, and virtually every one reverberates with a kind of wild tenderness' - Thomas Lux.; 'Addonizio's honesty and self-knowledge will pierce you to the core' - Carolyn Kizer.; 'With a noir gusto, Addonizio's passionate monologues draw you into the boudoir of narrative and keep you there until she's finished. Her sleekly told story-meditations are both terribly familiar and wonderfully intense' - Tony Hoagland.; 'Reading a poem by Kim Addonizio is like driving down a deserted road, late at night, and hearing a song on the radio so good you have to pull over. Indeed, this poet is tuned into all the joy and suffering for miles around... She is a poet of brave sensuality and intimacy, for whom the heart is an "intial-scarred tabletop"' - Martin Espada.; 'Like any good nighthawk, Addonizio finds Eros and loss inseparable, where they lurk in lovers' exchanges and at the bottom of empty gin bottles. But these poems serve as affirmations too, in long lyrical questions-and-answers that push on into the early morning, braving last call' - The New Yorker.; 'If you hear, like I do, Lady Day singing "Good Morning Heartache", as you turn these pages heading toward a new poem by one of America's best poets, then you are in the right precinct of feeling and intelligence. With as much casual anguish, resilience, and unrelenting beauty, Kim Addonizio writes as though human survival in the raw requires a moral refutation of existential melancholy. The blues poem is her weapon, and arguably, like Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown and others since, Addonizio shows how the blues poem is truly about a magnificent affirmation of life rather than the sources of its sorrows. She proves once again, the blues is our first and distinct contribution to global poetry, and she plays them for a new world with a new sensibility' - Major Jackson, author of Roll Deep.

• NEW POEMS Cigar Box Banjo Open Mic Creased Map of the Underworld Spell against Impermanence Idioms for Rain Half-Hearted Sonnet Penis Blues Heraclitean Lives of the Poets Sleep Stage Dream the Night My Brother Dies Salvation The Women Radio Blues The Givens Wine Tasting From THE PHILOSOPHER'S CLUB What the Dead Fear First Poem For You The Philosopher's Club Full Moon Gravity Them The Call Beds February 14, 1989 The Last Poem About the Dead The Concept of Goda From TELL ME The Numbers Glass Quantum Garbage Things That Don't Happen Night of the Living, Night of the Dead Virgin Spring New Year's Day Generations Collapsing Poem The Divorcee and Gin Last Call The Promise The Body In Extremis Rain Tell Me Mermaid Song Good Girl "What Do Women Want?" Aliens Like That Prayer For Desire From WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED LOVE Stolen Moments Blues for Dante Alighieri Muse You Don't Know What Love Is Ex-Boyfriends Death Poem Scary Movies Dead Girls Eating Together Cat Poem February 14 The Way of the World Chicken Lush Life Bad Girl Blues for Robert Johnson Fuck Kisses From LUCIFER AT THE STARLITE November 11 For You Lucifer at the Starlite Storm Catechism Verities Long-Distance You Were The First Line is the Deepest Another Day on Earth The Smallest Town Alive The Matter Crossing Weaponry Suite pour les Amours Perdus In the Lonely Universe Merrily Sui My Heart Semper Shrine News Happiness After Grief