Description
Poetry. Women's Studies. WHAT'S HANGING ON THE HUSH wrestles with concerns that range from race, gender and sexuality to loneliness, madness and grief, and nothing escapes questioning, least of all the position of the poet herself. With humor and slightly off-kilter introspection, these poems disrupt even their own speaking, frequently singing "I." Collectively, they demonstrate the underlying restlessness of a subjectivity never quite at ease, like the solitary cats who meander across these pages and disappear only to turn up where they are least expected. Operating in a range of modes, from tight lyrics to sprawling, fragmented texts to language experiments, WHAT'S HANGING ON THE HUSH is a tightly constructed interrogation of construction itself. At its heart is an exploration of solitude and a feminist's existential reckoning—the struggle of being/making in the world.
Author Bio
Lauren Russell is the author of DESCENT (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2020) and WHAT'S HANGING ON THE HUSH (Ahsahta Press, 2017), and DREAM-CLUNG, GONE (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2012). A 2017 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow in Poetry, she has also received fellowships from Cave Canem, The Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and VIDA/The Home School, and residencies from the Rose O'Neill Literary House at Washington College, the Millay Colony for the Arts, and City of Asylum/Passa Porta. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day, boundary 2, The Brooklyn Rail, Cream City Review, and the anthologies Bettering American Poetry 2015 and Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry, among others. She is a research assistant professor in English and is assistant director of the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics at the University of Pittsburgh.
Author City: PITTSBURGH, PA USA