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Red Sky: Poetry on the Global Epidemic of Violence Against Women
Sable Books proudly announces the release of Red Sky: Poetry on the Global Epidemic of Violence Against Women, an anthology of work featuring poems by Naomi Shihab Nye, Tony Hoagland, Thylias Moss, Fady Joudah, Jaki Shelton Green, Hélène Cardona, Zeina Hashem Beck, and the work of 100+ poets in response to globally oppressive physical, psychological, emotional, and systemic violence against women. Red Sky is a collection of work by established and widely published poets as well as new and emergent voices around the world.
The World Health Organization reports that as many as 70% of women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime. Every day in America, at least three women are murdered by a former or current intimate partner. Red Sky, co-edited by Melissa Hassard, Gabrielle Langley, and Stacy Nigliazzo, began as a way to address the untimely murder of Caroline Minjares by her estranged intimate partner. Friend and colleague of Ms. Nigliazzo’s, Caroline’s story has left a Texas family and community devastated by intimate partner violence, all too common in this country and the world.
Every shattered home,
every story worth telling.
–Naomi Shihab Nye
Poetry has the ability both to heal and to help us begin to understand. It is through this understanding and these voices that we hope to affect change.
Proceeds for Red Sky will be directed to the Global Fund for Women.
The World Health Organization reports that as many as 70% of women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime. Every day in America, at least three women are murdered by a former or current intimate partner. Red Sky, co-edited by Melissa Hassard, Gabrielle Langley, and Stacy Nigliazzo, began as a way to address the untimely murder of Caroline Minjares by her estranged intimate partner. Friend and colleague of Ms. Nigliazzo’s, Caroline’s story has left a Texas family and community devastated by intimate partner violence, all too common in this country and the world.
Every shattered home,
every story worth telling.
–Naomi Shihab Nye
Poetry has the ability both to heal and to help us begin to understand. It is through this understanding and these voices that we hope to affect change.
Proceeds for Red Sky will be directed to the Global Fund for Women.
- GenresPoetry
149 pages, Paperback
Published October 23, 2016
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October 9, 2016This isn't a real "review," per se, as I am one of the roughly 100 poets included in this anthology of poems about violence against women, alongside Naomi Shihab Nye, Tony Hoagland, and Fady Joudah, to name a few.
The women whose stories are told herein are victims of intimate partner violence and stranger violence, police brutality and military conflicts, sex abuse by relatives and battering by partners, violations facilitated by culturally and legally enshrined prejudices, bystander apathy, poverty, and war. The poems presenting these stories include a sestina and two pantoums, a ghazal and two erasures, in addition to many free verse and prose poems; they evoke Snow White and Gretel, Daphne and Persephone, Leda and her swan.
I liked how the book was not balkanized into harshly divided sections and yet was still organized with evident thoughtfulness, such that poems with mutually resonant subject matter were juxtaposed. I also appreciated the consistent high quality of the poems, which made it possible for me to read them all in order in the course of a single day. (According to the intro, these roughly 100 poems were selected from close to 1000 submitted and solicited poems.)
A few poems that stood out to me included Leila Allen's "Verge," in its deeply poignant portrayal of an emotionally vulnerable teen girl's confused feelings toward her assailant, a trusted acquaintance, in the instants before he sexually assaults her; Shoshauna Shy's "The Detective Asks Me What He Said," in its horrifyingly stark depiction of a rapist's psychology; Lizzie Holden's "Light Switch," in the devastating subtlety with which it limns a child abuse scenario from the child victim's perspective; and Carolyn Dahl's "Flower Girl Dress," in the astonishing lyricism with which it recalls a group of young girls' lives before they are coerced into prostitution ("Their shoulders shift in blue dresses like awakened wings.... [A]rmadillos settle their accordion shells under bushes to await the feast.").
Proceeds from the sale of this book will be directed to the Global Fund for Women.
http://sablebooks.org/red-sky/
The women whose stories are told herein are victims of intimate partner violence and stranger violence, police brutality and military conflicts, sex abuse by relatives and battering by partners, violations facilitated by culturally and legally enshrined prejudices, bystander apathy, poverty, and war. The poems presenting these stories include a sestina and two pantoums, a ghazal and two erasures, in addition to many free verse and prose poems; they evoke Snow White and Gretel, Daphne and Persephone, Leda and her swan.
I liked how the book was not balkanized into harshly divided sections and yet was still organized with evident thoughtfulness, such that poems with mutually resonant subject matter were juxtaposed. I also appreciated the consistent high quality of the poems, which made it possible for me to read them all in order in the course of a single day. (According to the intro, these roughly 100 poems were selected from close to 1000 submitted and solicited poems.)
A few poems that stood out to me included Leila Allen's "Verge," in its deeply poignant portrayal of an emotionally vulnerable teen girl's confused feelings toward her assailant, a trusted acquaintance, in the instants before he sexually assaults her; Shoshauna Shy's "The Detective Asks Me What He Said," in its horrifyingly stark depiction of a rapist's psychology; Lizzie Holden's "Light Switch," in the devastating subtlety with which it limns a child abuse scenario from the child victim's perspective; and Carolyn Dahl's "Flower Girl Dress," in the astonishing lyricism with which it recalls a group of young girls' lives before they are coerced into prostitution ("Their shoulders shift in blue dresses like awakened wings.... [A]rmadillos settle their accordion shells under bushes to await the feast.").
Proceeds from the sale of this book will be directed to the Global Fund for Women.
http://sablebooks.org/red-sky/
Displaying 1 of 1 review