Water • Print + E-book

Summary

Knocking over a glass of water—a simple act begins a three-act play. Here, poetry is liquid, taking the shape of its container as concrete poetry, dramatic verse, prose poetry, and open verse. Body and planet, utterance and song—the poem-sequence mirrors the quandary of a human in the Anthropocene, a cataclysmic speck of dust in geologic time. Water in Three Acts chooses to respect peril, manifesting an operatic shipwreck, bells to ladle snow, and improvised songs to scintillate newborn bacteria. Not through the looking glass, but through the spilled glass.

Details

• Selected for the 2020 Emerging Poets Chapbook Series
• Saddle-stitched, risograph cover, 32 pages, 7″ x 9″, FSC-certified paper
• Purchase allows three interactive PDF or EPUB downloads
• Order signed book launch edition
• Order print only
• Order e-book only

Praise

“The language of Anna Morrison’s stunning debut chapbook ‘builds and builds and builds’ until we are submerged in an entirely new world, one where foam speaks, where water comes alive in its containment, where the hum and hush of the early universe is given its own song. Water in Three Acts is profoundly destabilizing and, thereby, utterly transformative. The voices here feel conjured from a deep communion with the sea, vapors, and water-winds that existed before recorded historical time. I felt my language break up and yield as I communed with the energies and images ushered in by these powerful poems. With each line, we are asked to surf and navigate the waves of a singular poetic vision. This chapbook will transform your relationship with the life-giving and death-giving substance we call water.”
        –Brynn Saito

“In this chapbook, Morrison uses form and sonic play to have the reader experience this fluctuation between the familiar and unfamiliar.”
        –Foglifter

Author

Anna Morrison’s poetry can be read in journals such as BOMB, Fence, Lana Turner, Interim, Puerto del Sol, and Baest: a journal of queer forms & affects. Her poems won the LUMINA and Prism Review poetry prizes, and her critical prose has appeared in Omniverse. Passionate about small-press publishing, she’s served as an editor for Kelsey Street Press and received an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Saint Mary’s College of CA. Her journal on poetry, art, and poetic practice can be found online at matchlikesyllables.space.

Artwork

Cover by LK James.