Kelly Schirmann – författare

A hybrid collection of poetry and prose, The New World follows the attempts, failures, and re-attempts at understanding and articulating an era of immense social upheaval, political corruption, and environmental consequence. In five distinct sections, the book refracts, explores and investigates these global themes through the realm of the personal and private. Old journals and notes are revisited as a way of understanding the self and its various revisions and mistakes. The New World tells the story of escapism and arrival, growth and decay, and despair and optimism as they occur, often simultaneously, within the mind of our narrator. The book asks, “How do you write poems in a country like this?”, inviting every reader to take stock of themselves, and to reassess the ways “One human world / [empties] completely / into the bigger one.”

A meditation on messages, Popular Music asks: how does art make itself heard? The poems of Kelly Schirmann’s debut full-length collection offer a unique voice, investigating the spaces between—between the singer and the audience; the lyrics and the message. Like a pop song, these poems encourage and distract, inviting the reader and listener in, wanting to tell you things that seem intimate, while telling them to everyone. They want to know: is anyone listening? And reader, we hope you are.