Nandi Comer – författare

A vivid portrait of trying to find home when two places are calling.Alex Vartan Gubbins paints a stunning portrait of a life lived between his two homelands: Michigan and Armenia. Written primarily in English with some poems in Armenian, this collection combines elegy and lyric across prose and open forms to shed light on the conundrum of diaspora—feeling rooted here, there, and in neither place entirely. Crossing the boundaries of space and time, Gubbins probes and unsettles notions of legacy, family, diaspora, geopolitical borders, and narratives of power. The ebb and flow of sadness and longing, paralleled by unshakeable spirit, ultimately settles within these poems as hope and wonder at existing in the everyday.

A collection honoring the experience of human connection.Inspired by classic Motown and the Midwest's rich history of social poetics, Andrew Collard's poetry collection asks readers to trust their bodies and the experience of human connection in a society that alienates us from our handiwork and from each other. Set largely in Southeast Michigan, these poems evoke the joys and difficulties of raising a family amid financial uncertainty in the empire of the automobile. Poems like "Bus Stop Promenade" and "Loneliness in the Key of Sprawl," in tone and form, embrace the challenge of putting language to experience, while the "Autotopia" sequence addresses issues of labor and the environment. Lo-Fi Citadels is a love song sung among grocery stores, bus stops, malls, and vacant lots to remind us what we're made of. This stunning book emphasizes the interrelatedness of living things and revels in the interdependence of the human body and mind.

The work of a lauded poet-scholar whose poems excavate the hidden treasures of human consciousness from the ruins of a tragic history.Encompassing fifty years of poetry and creative work, this collection showcases the arc and impact of Nubia Kai's poetic voice. From the Black Arts Movement to the present, Kai's poetry has maintained steadfast attention to racial oppression and resistance, Black history and culture, colonialism, political protest, freedom, and experiences of love. Collected in a single volume for the first time, Kai's celebrated works are featured alongside new writing in five parts: "Peace of My Mind," "Solos," "The Winds That Scatter," "Jubilee," and "New Poems." Her writing displays a musicality, urgency, and intentionality that reveal both her mastery of the craft and her own literary innovations, which expanded the boundaries of poetry for writers to come. These poems reflect a profound understanding of the ethos of our lived experiences and cement Kai's legacy as one of the most important artists and poets of the twentieth-century United States.