Retablo for a door

Michelle Penn is the author of the book-length poem, Paper Crusade (Arachne Press, 2022) and the chapbook, Self-portrait as a diviner, failing (Paper Swans Press, 2018). Recent poems have appeared in journals on both sides of the Atlantic, including 'Anthropocene', 'Stand', 'The London Magazine' and 'PN Review'. As part of Corrupted Poetry (with Nic Stringer and Fiona Larkin), she hosts innovative poetry/art/music events in London.When not writing poetry, Michelle works on interpretation projects for museums and cultural sites worldwide.

"These are votive offerings, testings of words, laced with blood and lit with devastating intensity. I found them very powerful." -Chrissy Williams"Michelle Penn's retablos are eloquent and profound curiosities. Like the earliest manifestations of lyric, these poems have a 'sung' quality that can be felt within the body. The resulting sound is a howling of 'pain into mountains of scree' that 'hungers to become ephemeral as wind.' But even as these poem-objects inhabit ancient traditions, they are simultaneously futuristic, political and intimately strange - as though the poet has invented a new medium embracing dance, sculpture, relic-assemblage and oratorio. Such originality is rare." -Kathryn Maris