E. Kristin Anderson's Blog

Hello, friends! Someday I will pay a niece or nephew to maintain this website, but in the meantime, it’s just me, and this blog, and the occasional news.

The last few years have been particularly prolific for me in poetry, and I’ve been doing my best to keep this page of my website up to date. So feel free to go browse some poems. I have also published a few essays and flash fictions and you can find those here.

The big news so far for 2020 is that I have a brand new chapbook, BEHIND, ALL YOU’VE GOT available now from Semiperfect Press!

[image error] Semiperfect Press, 2020

This smol chap is a collection of erasure poems written using articles from old issues of Nintendo Power Magazine—yes, the mag from the 80s and 90s that you used to help you figure out how to beat Metroid and Lemmings. I wrote the poems in this chapbook in 2014 and 2015 before I got sick, so a part of me feels like the poems are missives from the past, just like the material they were sourced from. Poems from this chap were first published in Nashville Review, Noble / Gas Qtrly, Whale Road Review, and Third Point Press, and you can find a few here:

“Without heads, living statues”
“Airborne, essential”
“Throw”
“You have to keep occupied”
“Battle a Man” and “I scream”

Check out Semiperfect Press to pick up a copy!

In other Good! News! my out of print chapbook WE’RE DOING WITCHCRAFT will be reprinted in March by Porkbelly Press and I know this title was in and out of print so fast a lot of folks totally missed the first run. But! Here it is! Thank you so much to Nicci Mechler at Porkbelly for giving this chapbook a new home.

[image error]Porkbelly Press, March 2019

WE’RE DOING WITCHCRAFT will be available next month, but if you’re at AWP in San Antonio next week, I will have copies on me. Otherwise, keep an eye on the Porkbelly Press poetry catalog.

Next week I’ll be participating in two readings and a panel and I hope to see you there! Info on where to find me is below—be sure to come say hi! I’ll have books and chapbooks for sale with me and I’m of course looking forward to seeing everyone and their beautiful books and writings. Maybe, if we’re very lucky, I’ll update this page again before AWP 2021. See you in San Antonio!

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Grey Book Press, 2017.

So far in 2018 I have:

Been in a bunch of magazines with a bunch of poems.
Seen the release of my 90s anthology Come As You Are from Anomalous Press.
Lost my gallbladder to the Great Gallbladder Exodus of 2018. Also a surgeon.
Read my poems at three different events that required me to go outside and talk to strangers.
Written two essay-shaped things and sent them to actual magazines. (One has been accepted at an actual magazine and is forthcoming in a soon-to-be-seen issue and what even is this?)
Had a new chapbook with Grey Book Press that totally came out in December but, you know, it’s still here.

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Issue 47.

I’ve been working steadily on getting into the world a lot of the poems that I wrote last year, including some weird things (like “Jumping the Fuck Shark” which is over at Tinderbox Poetry Journal) and some erasure things (“Insensate force for good” over at the Inheritance issue of Lines + Stars is one of my faves) and some deeply personal cento things I made with an Anne Rice novel (New kid on the block Cotton Xenomorph published one of the first of these, “The light fell in.” a week or so ago.

In January my poems appeared in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review for the first time (“I’m going now.”)and in Storyscape for the second time (“Indecorous, clear” and “Mark my words, sugar”). In December I was the featured writer at Drunk Monkeys where they printed a bunch of my poems. I also found myself in Salamander, a journal I’d been sending to for ten years. Never give up, y’all.

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Porkbelly Press, November 2017.

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention November’s Bramble & Thorn anthology from Porkbelly Press. I feel privileged to be a part of any of Porkbelly’s projects, and this little anthology is incredibly gorgeous and packed with beautiful writing. You’ll also find my poems “At freak-out point” and “The night pressed dark.”

And while I am, indeed, writing this blog post from a hospital bed minus one gallbladder, hooked up to saline and antibiotics, and aching from the bellybutton, I do feel like 2018 has a lot of promise. There are books to write, poems to submit, projects to get lost in. And while I am, indeed, worried about whether my lack of gallbladder will affect my ability to consume ice cream and pizza, I am less worried about pretty much everything else.

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Anomalous Press, January 2018.

Come As You Are has arrived at our contributors’ doorsteps over the last couple of weeks, and watching the writers from the anthology enjoy this book and enjoy each others’ work has been, well, everything.

The nostalgia here is only one element that makes Come As You Are wonderful and exciting to read. I love all the points of view, the different writing styles, the different 90s things that stuck with us, the contexts in which these writers chose to frame their pieces. There’s also the deeply personal nature of so many of these pieces that both surprised and delighted me. I’m wicked proud of this book and I hope you’ll go grab yourself a copy either at Anomalous Press’ Etsy Store or on Amazon or various other bookselling places on the Internet.

So that’s what I’m up to and I hope you’re up to things, too. I hope that you haven’t had to have an organ pulled out through an incision in your belly button, but I guess sometimes the alternatives aren’t so pleasant. And hopefully this intervention will mean I’ll still be able to see y’all at AWP in Tampa at the beginning of March. Take good care of yourselves!

 

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As a practitioner of found poetry, I’m often tagged into Facebook threads and other Internet discussions on the subject. What is found poetry? And what isn’t? And how do I make a proper found poem?

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I’ve been saying forever that I should write a blog post on this. But, looking at the questions above, there’s a lot of this to cover. So I’m going to try and break it down for y’all.

There are a lot of different styles of found poetry, the basics being erasure (or blackout poetry), cento, and cut-up (or remix). I won’t bore you with a lesson on each of those today, since you can pretty much get the deets from Wikipedia.

A common misconception is that found poetry is a literal poem you found. During my time as an editor at Found Poetry Review, I sometimes saw writers send in a poem written by someone else that they found in a book or magazine, and sent it in. Just a poem. Someone else’s in full. That’s not what constitutes a found poem. That’s just literally finding someone else’s work. Which is fun, you can definitely enjoy it, but it’s not what practitioners of found poetry are talking about when they say they write or make found poems. And it’s certainly not something you can attribute to yourself or publish without permission from the author.

Another common misconception is that a found poem is, to paraphrase comments I’ve seen running around Facebook discussions, “just something you found out in the world that seems poetic.” Like a street sign, the back of a cereal box, or a description on a menu. While you can totally use street signs and menus to create found poetry, you have to intervene on the text in order for it to be a found poem. Something YOU wrote. A found poem requires engagement with the original text—or source text—by the author. So, if you took a bunch of street signs and cobbled them together into something new, yes, you’d have a found poem. Or you could create an erasure or cut-up from text on a menu. It’s not necessarily easy to make a found poem this way, but it can be done!

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The next faux pas is something I have commonly seen while reading for quite a few journals where I’ve come across submissions of found poetry. And this is taking a source text—anything from a paragraph from a novel, promotional copy from the back of a DVD, a magazine article—and simply adding linebreaks. While it certainly does require some engagement and intervention on the part of the poet to linebreak a text, the text remains ultimately the same as when the poet first encountered it. A good found poem strategically erases, rearranges, or otherwise changes the source text into something completely new.

Which brings me to the number one pitfall of the found poetry practitioner: Summarizing. When you engage a source text to write a found poem, it’s important to write something that doesn’t reflect the tone or content of the source (with some exceptions, which I’ll point out down page). For example, if you’re using a movie review in the newspaper for your source, your new found poem shouldn’t merely summarize the movie review (or the movie). It should say something completely new, and in your voice as a poet. You could use the article, for example, to write a love poem, or to write about a rough experience that you had. This is one of the great beauties of found poetry, in my experience—finding a new story inside a story that already exists.

It can take a lot of practice to find your voice in found poetry, so don’t be afraid to make mistakes, just like any other type of writing. You may find that your found poetry voice is the same as your traditional poetry voice. You may find that it’s different. But it should still be yours. The key is that you intervene on the text and create something new and different from the narrative of the original.

There can be exceptions to this. And I think that one of the places you’ll find this is in political found poetry, and this can be tricky. One of the greatest things about found poetry is that you can use it to subvert or even respond to a source text that you find problematic or disturbing. So say you have an op ed about how women should be in the kitchen making sandwiches all day long. You could write a found poem subverting this, using the language from the original text to present a poem that gives your opposing opinion. You can see how being this close to the original source could be hard in terms of intervention on the text, but the key here is using your voice to say something new in terms of style and opinion but similar in language and topic.

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I’m not an expert in fair use, and there are lots of better resources on best practices for fair use of poetry, but I will say this: The above example is one of the most difficult to pull off. But if you’re following the above ideas and guidelines, you should be able to practice—and publish!—found poetry without any concern about fair use or copyright issues. It’s like parody in the sense that you are altering the original content enough for it to be an original piece of art. Using one, two, or even more source texts, so long as you are creating a new narrative, writing an original piece, and not using too much (and “too much” is going to be subjective in a lot of cases—I may write more on fair use in the future), you’re in the clear.

Regarding permissions, no, you don’t need permission from the author of the source text to write or publish found poetry using their text so long as you are within the bounds of fair use. It falls under the same types of laws and restrictions as parody or collage. However, it’s worth noting that found poetry can become problematic if the author is, say, a white man using texts written by a woman of color to create erasures that discuss race. This would probably be appropriative and thoughtless. You want to be just as mindful and meticulous as you would be writing any poem, if not more so. Being conscientious about what type of source text you’re using and why can be a big part of crafting found poetry.

So go forth and make found poems! Some of my favorite source texts are horror novels, YA mysteries, women’s magazines, and the science section of the newspaper. I know poets who have written cool stuff using descriptions of food products, Harlequin romances, political commentary, comic books, other poets’ poems, and TV shows. But a good practitioner of found poetry can make a poem from almost anything. I aspire to be that poet.

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Hello people of the Internet!

I know it’s been like almost a year since I’ve posted anything here. It’s been a busy year of recovery and writing and generally just trying to get my shit together. I’m still working on that last one. But I’ve been here, and I’ve been making things and doing things and I hope you have been too!

I’ve had poems out this summer in Cleaver and Atlas + Alice and Banshee and Underblong and Roanoke Review and FLAPPERHOUSE and Third Coast and Hawai’i Review. You can go click those things and read most of them online, though some of them do have print editions which I hope you’ll be interested in.

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Banshee Lit Issue #5: Autumn/Winter 2017.

Earlier this year I joined the staff of Red Paint Hill and I’ve been working with them on their magazine and their books. It’s been really nice to have my hands in reading slush again, and the team at RPH is lovely. I hope you’ll check out our recent issues here! And submission guidelines are here!

Meanwhile, at Anomalous Press, the team has been hard at work on the COME AS YOU ARE anthology, a fabulous volume of works on 90s pop culture featuring poems and flash pieces from some of my favorite writers including Danez Smith, Chen Chen, Allison Joseph, Gayle Brandeis, Randon Billings Noble, Rosebud Ben-Oni, Majda Gama, Ivy Alvarez, Sheila Squillante, and so many more. The pieces in this book are exciting and funny and heartbreaking and beautiful and I can’t wait to share it with y’all. Soon! The cover was screenprinted by Ruth Foley of Sentimental Asylum (she is also a brilliant writer and Managing Editor at Cider Press Review) and it righteously murdered her husband’s old pants. RIP Jed’s pants.

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Anamalous Press, 2017.

You can preorder COME AS YOU ARE at Anamalous Press’ store, here! And a big thanks to Samantha Duncan, former Executive Editor at ELJ Editions, for helping usher this anthology into the universe!

I also just got the cover for my chapbook 17 SEVENTEEN XVII which is forthcoming from Grey Book Press! This cover was done by teen artist clementine (you can check out her Instagram here) and I am so beyond impressed. All the little details, and the links it has to the poems in the chap—it’s too much!

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Grey Book Press, 2017.

17 SEVENTEEN XVII will be available later this fall and it is such a privilege to work with Scott Sweeney at Grey Book again (they did my chapbook FIRE IN THE SKY last spring). His willingness to do another weird little book with me a huge vote of confidence. The book contains seventeen pantoums that each have a “broken” line which pushes the line count for each piece to seventeen. And I used found text from Seventeen magazine to write the poems—they’re also effectively centos. I had so much fun writing this chap and I have to shout out to Doug Luman of Found Poetry Review and Container and the Applied Poetics tools who wrote me a spreadsheet to help me write pantoums. I’m really bad at counting lines in formal poetry!

Meanwhile it’s almost October and soon we will be entering round two for THE POEMING! THE POEMING II: Revenge of Rice starts October 1st and this year Sarah Nichols, Sarah Duncan, and I will be leading a group of 35 authors creating found poetry from Anne Rice’s 35 novels. Last year we had 56 folks making poems from Stephen King’s work, and so many of the poets have reported in over the last twelve months to tell us that they’ve been successfully placing these poems in magazines and anthologies! We’re hoping that everyone has as much fun and success this year! Check out THE POEMING’s “Motherhouse” here and follow us to see some of the poems that spring from the works of Anne Rice!

So that’s what I’m up to! I hope that you are feeling equally busy and fulfilled! And hopefully it won’t take a year for me to post something here again.

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So I still have been slow at blogging during my recovery and general busy-ness this summer. That said, I have some cool news! I have a cover for my chapbook WE’RE DOING WITCHCRAFT, which is forthcoming from Hermeneutic Chaos Press in October!

This book collects some of my work on the female body, feminism, femininity, and the villification of women. Some poems lean toward struggles and beauties of adolescence, while others are more biological, political, aggressive. The collection is a mix of traditional and found poetry, which is a first for me. I’m really excited for y’all to read it!

So here’s the full wrap of the cover, made by Shinjini Bhattacharjee and Olivia Rose Edvalson:

Hermeneutic Chaos Press, October 2016.

Some of the poems in the chapbook have been published in magazines, and can be found here, if you’d like a taste:

“At that age when we girls become fairies”

“Bruce Wayne’s Girlfriend” and “Tupperware Party”

“Series of small events”

“1996”

Thank you so much to everyone who has supported me, especially this past year as I’ve struggled with so many health issues. And a huge shout out to the Starbucks crew who have been showering me in love and kindness and Pumpkin Spice. (I missed a LOT of Pumpkin Spice season last year!)

There will be an event to celebrate this book in Austin at Malvern Books on October 22. You are all invited! I’ll be reading from WITCHCRAFT, and there will be other readers TBA. (So far Abe Louise Young is confirmed! YAY!) And we are encouraging folks to come in costume in celebration of witchy, wonderful, magical women. Whether you show up as a Salem witch, Kesha, Joan of Arc, Elsa from Frozen or Regina from Once Upon a Time (or even a magical version of yourself!), I hope to see you there!

So I’ve been terrible about keeping up with the blogging and I could tell you all about my health and that stuff but that would be boring so I’m just going to get to the news.

Grey Book Press, May 2016.

First things first, I have a new chapbook out. FIRE IN THE SKY is a chapbook of three long poems built from scrambled and then erasured Lana Del Rey Lyrics. Each of the poem uses language from one of her first three albums. It’s pretty fun to read from (I’ll be reading from it at Malvern Books on July 22!) and hopefully y’all enjoy it as well. This one is very swear-y and sex-y, so it won’t be best for most younger readers. But, you know, everyone is different.

I really enjoyed working with editor Scott Sweeney on this book. Would recommend. A++++. (Hi, Scott.)

If you want a copy, check out my publisher Grey Book Press, or order directly from me by emailing e.kristin.anderson@gmail.com. I have adorable fireworks buttons and some found poetry kits to go along with orders. Books are $6 + shipping, either from me or from Grey Book.

I was going to write a post today about my new chapbook but I frankly don’t care much about that today or this week or for a little bit at least because of the news I got this morning.

Today we lost Prince, and as most of y’all know, Prince is important to me as a writer and as a human. There’s a certain love there, even though he’s not a person I have ever met, and so there’s a grief here. And it’s a grief that can’t be filled with gifs or jokes or words.

So there are no words. Even though I’m making words right now.

I want to say thank you to everyone who has reached out to me and who continues to reach out. Those close to me know that this has been a trying time for me personally and that Prince saved my life before I got sick with the kidney things and that he has continued to be a place I turn to in my moments of despair. Right now I can’t listen to his music. I hope I can again soon. But I am glad to have people I love and who love me who will talk to me about Prince. Everyone from my BFFs to my grandmother to my readers to the barista at my Starbucks has expressed love today and it means a lot and I hope that we can all always be so loving to each other, in times of grief or otherwise.

I also want to say that the best way to honor Prince, or to honor any artist who has affected you the way Prince has affected me, is to make art. And to help others make art. Prince has always been especially concerned with helping women and other marginalized voices be heard. He’s been a pioneer in artists’ and musicians’ rights (there’s a reason his videos aren’t on YouTube), and he has always worked to better his community.

So work to better your community. Make art. Make sure that your neighborhood schools have funding for the arts. BUY that album by that new singer instead of just putting the YouTube clip on repeat or torrenting. Go to a poetry reading or a gallery opening and put a dollar in a tip jar. Say thank you. Say that you liked the work. Say something. Write a letter.

Last week, on one of my darkest nights of the soul, a poet friend told me I should write to Prince because even if he never read it it would mean something to me. I’m wishing I had. She also said maybe he’d need it on a dark night of his soul. I’d like to think Prince would never need a letter from a little poet in Texas to feel loved. But I wish I’d written that letter a thousand times over. For me probably way more than for him. But I wish.

Write the letters, you guys. Make the art and write the fucking letters.

Hello readers! I’m so excited to finally be able to share some beautiful art with you. I have several books headed your way this spring (I’m exhausted and excited and exhausted and exhilarated and okay mostly freaking out with AWESOME about this).

First, some housekeeping: I’ll be at AWP this week, so if you’re at the conference, be sure to find me! I have an off-site reading (free and open to the public) at Ham & Eggs Tavern on Thursday at 5pm, and at 4:30 on Saturday I have a panel on bringing poetry to the YOUTHS with Lynn Melnick, Camille Rankine, Kerri Webster, and Sheila McMullin. Come see us! I’ll also have lots of fun and fabulous swag to distribute and HYSTERIA BINGO cards! So find me (at readings, panels, at the book fair), play BINGO, get stuff, buy my books, have fun, YAY!

Onto the art.

So. Coming very soon are my next two found poetry chapbooks, FIRE IN THE SKY with Grey Book Press and ACOUSTIC BATTERY LIFE with ELJ Publications. The art is here. I’ve been sitting on it, admiring it, sneaking peeks to people on my phone. But I finally get to share it with you! Here you go:

Grey Book Press, 2016

This piece was done by author and artist Emily Capettini. I had my heart set on needlepoint and I’m so glad that I not only knew Emily, but that she was willing to do a custom piece for us for this book. FIRE IN THE SKY consists of three long poems in parts created by first scrambling and then erasuring Lana Del Rey lyrics, so I feel like the fireworks really compliment both the source material and the title of the book. I’m so excited about this. It will be out in early April.

And then, soon after, you’ll get this:

ELJ Publications, 2016.

This cover was done by Jodie Wynne, and is actually a crop of a piece of hers that I’ve admired of hers for years now. I’m so excited to be able to have it on the cover of my book of poems from Found Poetry Review’s Oulipost project. Acoustic Battery Life will be out later this spring from ELJ. I really hope you enjoy it.

If you love these covers as much as I do, I hope you’ll leave a comment to let the artists know.

And…I’ll see you at AWP!

Hi everyone! Apologies for disappearing again. But I’ve been buried in work for Lucky Bastard Press. Including—YES!—that secret anthology that I’ve been pretty bad at keeping under wraps. THE HYSTERIA ANTHOLOGY! An entire book of work by female and nonbinary writers reflecting on the experience of being in the female and/or nonbinary body.

The latest update on our cover art, a final sketch by Jodie Wynne. (Shared with permission from the artist.)

I can’t believe it’s finally happening. This anthology is one of the biggest undertakings of my career thus far. And, appropriately, some of the most awesome people I’ve ever worked with are a part of it.

Francesca Lia Block. Judith Ortiz Cofer. Rita Dove. Lesléa Newman. Patricia Smith. Natasha Trethewey.

I CAN’T EVEN.

Watch this space. Instead of my usual National Poetry Month festivities (I know y’all dig those, but I am still recovering from the whole kidney thing) I’ll be releasing news on the anthology over the next month.

Yes, soon, we will post the entire contributors list here. The list includes national, state, and city laureates. Winners of prizes like the O. Henry and the Pulitzer. Writers for whom this is their first publication and writers that I can’t even believe I tricked into appearing in a small press anthology.

HYSTERIA is approximately 180 pages of F U PATRIARCHY. We can literally throw the book at the system. And it’s coming in May.

If you want to help us out, I really hope you’ll check out our Indiegogo campaign. Lucky Bastard Press and I set this up so that we can pay our writers at a better rate, get some cash money to amazing cover artist Jodie Wynne, and possibly fund some HYSTERIA events in various cities.

So that’s what I’m up to. And I’ll be unravelling more details on this project in due time. Meanwhile, I really do hope you’ll pop on over to Indiegogo. I promise—you’re going to LOVE this book.

So you may have noticed that I haven’t really been posting, like, anything here in a while. And there’s a reason for that. I’ve been sick.

Not like flu sniffles sick. Like ended up in the hospital for three weeks and then again for two days and now I have several months of treatment to deal with an illness so weird and rare that was actually on House one time sick. (Legit. We even did the “it’s not lupus” thing.)

Thanks for the new meme, Ross.

I have chosen NOT to look up anything about this autoimmune disease and trust my doctors to tell me what I need to know because apparently some cases are pretty scary. And I will totally freak out. So I’m not going to name it here because if you know me personally you already know what it is and if you know me personally you know the temptation to Google this disease and read about the scary is killing me so I don’t want the Google to bring this post up for other people Googling and end up with links to info on my blog post.

Basically, my kidneys went rogue and I’m lucky to be alive. Very lucky.

I spent my 33rd birthday hooked up to a plasmapheresis robot. I also spent my birthday with some really good friends who came in to see me, which was really amazing, because who wants to party in a hospital? Anyway…it’s weird how after two weeks of plasma exchange, it felt almost normal to have a franken-neck catheter sticking out of my jugular. (And, yes, that’s why I didn’t do my annual Dear Teen Me letter on my b-day. Sorry, all two of you who were looking forward to that.)

Coming home was hard for a lot of reasons. For one, I actually had to move while I was in the hospital. My parents came down and did this for me and I can’t find anything! (Has anyone seen my tweezers? My eyebrows are a mess!) I also had been on bed rest for so long that my muscles atrophied. I had no idea this could happen so quick. And my body is still adjusting to the medications I’m on. And the (hopefully temporary) weird dietary restrictions so that I can keep my kidneys on the mend during treatment.

ELJ Magpies, December 2015.

I haven’t been able to do a lot of “normal” things like walking to my Starbucks or eating tacos. I’m having a hard time focusing on reading or writing (which is why it’s taken me so long to get this post up) let alone promoting my new chapbook that came out while I was in the hospital. (Go buy 17 DAYS here. It’s the “B-Side” to PRAY, PRAY, PRAY!) I am having a hard time standing up for long periods of time, so cooking is hard. Chores are hard(er). I’m sleeping a lot more than I usually would. (No more middle of the night poems for a while, I guess!) And I’ve fallen behind on magazine submissions. A lot.

I’m grateful, though, for the friends and family and members of the writing community who have been helping me out in so many ways. My parents came all the way from Maine to help me move and recover. Local friends new and old (some I’d only previously known from Facebook groups!) have been visiting and bringing food and cooking for me and helping with chores. And I’ve been receiving thoughtful care packages from poets all over. I really can’t imagine how I’d be doing this without these wonderful people. If I never get around to thank you notes (and I probably won’t because I’m terrible at this), know that I appreciate it so much that it makes me happy cry. And I’m not a happy crier. Like ever.

PRAY, PRAY, PRAY is dedicated to “the people I can call in the middle of the night, and those who might call me.” And that remains true. I didn’t know I’d need this so soon, but I did and I do. Even if I’m not making these phone calls in the middle of the night (although I think I might have woken up my grandfather once or twice), it’s so crucial that there are folks on the other end right now. And I really can’t wait to pay it forward. When I’m well again (which is the hope within the next five months or so, touch wood) you’ll probably see me at a lot of launch parties and readings around town. And one of my big goals is to be healthy enough to make it to AWP in the spring as planned. There will be so many super hugs there. Probably more crying. Sorrynotsorry.

One thing I’ve learned from this is that asking for help isn’t weak, it’s strong. And that when I asked for help I found out I had more friends than I ever could have imagined. What a gift this is. I’ve seen people close to me struggle with the grief of realizing that their friends aren’t who they thought they were when shit hits the fan. Y’all are amazing people out there and I can’t help but feel my heart swell with faith in humanity and a love for the community that we build every day.

There are lots of projects coming out from me this year, though, which I luckily already wrote/curated and which I will hopefully be able to promote and get out to y’all and enjoy because I am lucky to work with such awesome publishers. Grey Book Press just announced FIRE IN THE SKY which is my forthcoming chapbook of Lana Del Ray “scramblerasures.” (I scrambled her lyrics and then erasured the new text.) This one is definitely not for the kiddos or, like, anyone related to me who doesn’t like when I swear or talk about sexytimes. So you know. But I’m proud of it and I think readers will enjoy it. I also have ACOUSTIC BATTERY LIFE coming out with ELJ in March and SHE WITNESSES with dancing girl press later this spring, both experimental found poetry. Consider yourself warned: I’m up to stuff. Like I’m doing a thing with Lucky Bastard Press that some of y’all already know about and some of y’all don’t but I’m going to shout it big and wide and loud when we’re ready. Which I hope is soon. Gotta fix these kidneys first and foremost, though.

Beads!

Meanwhile, like I said, 17 DAYS is out, it’s more confessional poetry I wrote to Prince (during the day this time, but, you know, Prince), and if you dig/dug PRAY, PRAY, PRAY this should be something you dig, too. ELJ Publications released it under their new Magpies imprint and I am so grateful to editors Ariana D. Den Bleyker and Samantha Duncan for their hard work with me revising the manuscript and creating a beautiful book. So I really hope you enjoy it. I’m working on treats for those who buy (I have some adorable beads and stuff ready to go, just gotta get to making), so save your receipts if you buy direct from ELJ. I’ll remember you if you buy a signed copy from me (email e.kristin.andersonATgmailDOTcom). Just…does anyone know where my needle-nose pliers are?

Thanks again to everyone’s tireless support through what is turning out to be both the toughest thing I’ve been through and something I’m seeing a lot of silver linings in. Because silver linings are there. I had to look hard this time, but they’re there.