If you have ever felt like you didn’t belong, this book is for you. Gutter Rainbows is about moving through trauma toward transformation. It’s about growing up in Brooklyn & forming alliances with sidewalks. About being a girl on the verge of something shattering. About the fur. These tender, gritty poems work with the language of rocks and minerals to tell a story of the relationship between women’s bodies and geological trauma, along with the sediment of betrayal that lingers in our foundation. This book is about trusting yourself enough to claw your way out.

I’m so grateful to Mk Chavez, Rob McLennan, & Denise Low-Weso for their generous blurbs. So much gratitude as well to early readers including Claire Blotter, Sharon Coleman, & Sherre Vernon who talked me through various iterations & helped catalyze a stronger book.

“Melissa Eleftherion Carr has conjured a spectral labyrinth of psyche and precision. The poems in this collection oscillate between the visceral and the ethereal, exploring themes of identity, desire, and existential yearning with linguistic play that is both brutal and beautiful….Here, human experiences crystallize, reflecting natural beauty and human intervention—the cuts that form gems out of us, the fractures defining our most intimate landscapes….This collection is for anyone who has felt their own fractures, who has been both mineral and sculptor in the relentless pursuit of self-definition.” – MK Chavez, winner of the Pen Oakland Josephine Miles award & author of Dear Animal.

“I love Melissa Eleftherion’s Gutter Rainbows: the surprises, the intelligence, and the human stories attached to all of it. “No one owns a body,” she writes, and yet the works recursively connect human to natural realms. This is a book I will return to, just to see how the poet crafts these miracles.” ~Denise Low, Kansas Poet Laureate Emerita & award-winning author of 35 books of poetry & prose

“I’ve always delighted in the accumulated moments, rushes, staggers, staccatos and fragments of Melissa Eleftherion’s propulsive lyric. There is such a delight of sound and rhythm, and gutter rainbows is awash with the best of what her work simultaneously provides: an anxious calm, fine precision and concussive force. Her poems are akin to the ocean: as vast and dangerous as it is deep.” — rob mclennan, author & publisher for above/ground press

You can order Gutter Rainbows from Querencia, add Gutter Rainbows to your To-Read shelf at Goodreads, leave a review on Amazon, every little bit helps a poet out!

I’ll also be doing a few readings in September if you’d like to attend:

KRCB Radio w/ Jack Crimmins & Elizabeth Herron –  Monday, September 9, 12 pm

LOBA, Ukiah Branch Library – Saturday, September 21, 3 pm 

 Light Jacket Reading Series, Golden Gate Park, SF  – Saturday, September 28, 3 pm 

A little bit more about this book’s publishing journey:

I started writing Gutter Rainbows while finishing my first book field guide to autobiography in 2015, and it has been quite a journey to publication. It took years to brave the poems that wanted to come through, and during writing workshops with Bhanu Kapil & Hoa Nguyen, I began to muster the courage. Thanks, Bhanu & Hoa!

In 2021, I began sending it out to publishers, and on its first try, it was a semifinalist at YesYes Books. Early in 2023, it was accepted by another publisher. Unfortunately, that publisher didn’t like to use contracts, so I declined their offer after much consideration, tears, and hand-wringing. This is a deeply personal book, & I needed to ensure it retained its integrity. It was rejected a total of 32 times before it placed as a finalist with RiverRiver Books, just as it found its home with Querencia. It’s been a dream to work with Emily Perkovich at Querencia, and I’m grateful to Emily and the Querencia family. Never surrender the vision you have for your art! 

You can order Gutter Rainbows from Querencia, add Gutter Rainbows to your To-Read shelf at Goodreads, leave a review on Amazon, every little bit helps a poet out!

With love & gratitude, Melissa