Description
Poetry. Women's Studies. Foreword by Ariana Reines. Collected in this volume are Chelsey Minnis's first two books: ZIRCONIA (winner of the Alberta Prize) and Bad Bad. ZIRCONIA introduced a speaker described as "half-smirking, half-weeping" by the Village Voice. Minnis heralded the gurlesque, a term coined for the occasion and defined as "a feminine, feminist incorporating of the grotesque and cruel with the spangled and dreamy." Bad Bad ushers ZIRCONIA's juvenile persona into unblushing womanhood. The poems are equally clownish and fuck-offish, taking on with equivocal weightlessness the lexicons and trimmings of fashion, as it applies to the Self and the garments that clothe the Self, and self-obliteration. Minnis addresses the inner needs of the poet—"the purpose of poetry is to seem as lifelike as possible so that you actually exist."
Author Bio
Chelsey Minnis grew up in Denver. She attended the University of Colorado at Boulder and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is the author of BABY, I DON'T CARE (Wave Books, 2018), POEMLAND (Wave Books, 2009), ZIRCONIA (Fence Books, 2001), Foxina (Seeing Eye Books, 2002) and Bad Bad (Fence Books, 2007). In 2019, Fence published ZIRCONIA......................BAD BAD, a collection of Minnis' first two books. She lives in Boulder, Colorado. She also writes screenplays.
Author City: BOULDER, CO USA