Poetry. "In 'the steady ache of language' a picaresque (askew and bemused) I seeks ways of enlarging awareness and acceptance. How do I rise to life's ongoing occasion? How do I see the other fully? How can I find my way to the largest vision? HUMAN-CARRYING FLIGHT TECHNOLOGY offers a rich, complicated, original and vivid collection of responses to these questions—open-ended and exciting poems. Inviting us to come with him on a necessary and strange trip, mapping the unsteady space of memory and desire with unusual intensity, Shipman's work switches on the 'whisper burner' to lift us up where the heart's exquisite unreliability makes other worlds shimmer over and within our own."—Laura Mullen

"There is a deep sadness in Christopher Shipman that needs poems the way a carnivore needs meat. He makes poems to feed his sadness, to appease insistent hunger. He's become a skilled cook of these soul-meals."—Andrei Codrescu

Author City: BATON ROUGE, LA USA

Christopher Shipman lives in Baton Rouge with his wife Sarah, his dog George, and his two cats, Jack and Adele. He received a MFA in poetry from Louisiana State University in 2009. His poems have appeared in literary journals such as Cimarron Review, EXQUISITE CORPSE, The Offending Adam, Pedestal, and Salt Hill, among many others. Shipman is poetry editor for DIG Magazine of Baton Rouge and teaches at Baton Rouge Community College.