Description
Poetry. Winner of a MIPA Silver Medal for Poetry. MIRACULOUS is undoubtedly a hybrid work, but always firmly grounded in poetics. Conceptually, the narration echoes the effects of trauma: sometimes the writing unfolds in long prose poems, while at other times, a single fragment may appear alone on the page. Occasionally, multiple commas splice the language, as fear interrupts the flow of speech. Structurally, these devices are united through a series of repeated images that function as through-lines, weaving the narrative's various threads. For instance, birds frequently appear, the symbol, according to the ancient Greeks, of life continued, and a notion the narrator clings to: "birds don't die / only pass into the bodies of other birds." Like the faded balloon string the narrator finds on the street, the arrival of a bird bears a message that she needs—and needs enough to note—creating order within a landscape of grief, a system of meaning where life would otherwise be too frail.
Author Bio
Meg Shevenock has worked with gifted students through an approach of associative learning for the past eleven years, and more recently she has been a reader and researcher for the artist Ann Hamilton. Meg received an Individual Excellence Award from The Ohio Arts Council in 2020. Her poems and essays have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, Lana Turner, Best New Poets, Denver Quarterly, Ninth Letter, Prairie Schooner, 32 Poems, jubilat, Kenyon Review online and elsewhere. She maintains an ongoing telepathic art practice with her collaborator Jamie Boyle. Meg lives in Columbus, Ohio. Meg won the second annual Marystina Santiestevan First Book Prize.
Author City: COLUMBUS, OH USA