War is not my Mother

VI KHI NAO is the author of six poetry collections & of the short stories collection, A Brief Alphabet of Torture (winner of the 2016 FC2's Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize), the novel, Swimming with Dead Stars. Her poetry collection, The Old Philosopher, won the Nightboat Books Prize for Poetry in 2014. A recipient of the 2022 Jim Duggins, PhD Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize, her work includes poetry, fiction, film and cross-genre collaboration. She was the Fall 2019 fellow at the Black Mountain Institute: https://www.vikhinao.com

"Vi Khi Nao’s WAR IS NOT MY MOTHER is a descriptive 'chimerical metal, ferocious ambient voice, [and] saliva-bearing” world; certainly it illustrates its' …Postmodern Twist for the Classic Craft” in how its speech creates astonishing turns and images that give us a sentience, but that turn away from traditional 'crafted' images. To borrow from Cvetkovich, Nao's collection is a 'feel tank.' Poems hold a multiplicity of texts and allusions, and each one is 'wrapped in moisture and rime, like a chthonic present' and teaches us about the underworld’s posterity. Early in the collection we are presented with an essential question: 'To be with me or to toss me in a war zone, does it matter?' It does, because we stay with Nao throughout, even as we unmoor in witnessing the pain here, we see the deepening embodiment of language that excavates a vitality emerging out of survival." -Prageeta Sharma