Description
Poetry. Women's Studies. This is a book of two books of poetry that stand alone, yet are in conversation with each other. There are two front covers, as internally the books are back to back.
DON'T GET YOUR HOPES UP is a collection of declarations rounding corners, running to embrace. These poems hold monsters next to notes. Together, they say, "i build myself a deep nest," as though to imagine an ever-shifting space of both reckoning and healing in times of despair. It is precisely here, in "the place just behind the eyes," that seeing becomes a political act, as clear as the avowal to never look away. The poems of DON'T GET YOUR HOPES UP work through nothing less than magic.
MOON WOMAN begins "beholden to a body," at once lyrical and sharp, an incredible collection of poems that span intimate terrain to collective memories. With deftness, Fatima floats, submerges, and comes up for air. Her words, like testimonies, skim horizontally across the surface of her skin. There's a tenderness that is also critical and self-aware, calling for witness after trespass. Sit with MOON WOMAN under a tree. Breathe in these poems, as she whispers, "feel most free beneath my gaze," and then exhale.
Author Bio
courtney marie is a writer and artist based in Denton, Texas. she enjoys working with text as an art medium and performance object. her work has appeared in Nat. Brut, Spooky Girlfriend Press, Black Sun Lit, Souvenir Lit, The Thing Itself, etc. but also in basements and museums, street corners, bars, and art galleries; in cities all over the country. she is the co-founder and primary organizer of the art collective Spiderweb Salon (Best Literary Arts Group 2016, Dallas Observer), co-host of Pegasus Reading Series in Dallas, and the host of Spiderweb Salon's literary podcast, produced by Pariah. she lives with two cats and writes a lot of letters.
Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi is the founder of Dark Moon Poetry & Arts, a monthly series which spotlights the creative feminine and non-binary energies of North Texas across artistic disciplines. She can often be found on Dallas sidewalks using her typewriter to birth poems for strangers. She has been published in The Boiler, Entropy, Anthropology Now!, Bearing the Mask, and elsewhere. Her work has been featured by WFAA, KERA, the Dallas Morning News, D Magazine, and others.
Author City: USA