Residence Time • Print Only

Summary

Residence Time speaks of not only who crossed the Atlantic during the Middle Passage, but who is still suspended in the water. In her debut poetry collection, Sarah Kersey investigates her linguistic, spiritual, and familial origins through storytelling. The speaker in this collection’s unique perspective of a radiation worker and writer brings readers into dreams and a reconstruction of faith. Residence Time affirms the possibility of foundation building from a fragmented history while the past keeps passing.

Details

• Selected for the 2023 Emerging Poets Chapbook Series
• Saddle-stitched, risograph cover, 32 pages, 5″ x 7.25″, FSC-certified paper
• Order print + e-book
• Order e-book only

Praise

“’We were not meant to survive / the departure,’ writes Sarah Kersey in Residence Time, which, ironically, is the kind of book that becomes possible when someone in fact does survive the cataclysm. What words are suitable to describe it? How is language irrevocably altered in its aftermath? How do we make something beautiful out of what we’ve lived, and out of what the ancestors, our parents, and our loves have left us? Residence Time explores the detritus of the wake, and catalogues the rippling effects of loss—of history, of faith, of family—in the voice of a poet who is both careful and profound. Residence Time is small but mighty; Kersey has managed to fit a devastating, but beautiful world into it.”
        —Destiny O. Birdsong, author of Negotiations

“Sarah Kersey’s stunning debut, Residence Time, begins in origin and sinks into realities that operate like dreams. This speaker remarks on the sonic beauty of the word ‘diaspora,’ asking ‘how many iambs did it take to cross the sea?’ Kersey’s forms snap apart, square, and seep—each poem scrambles excitedly, expansive like a midnight conversation between beloveds hidden under a sheet. I will turn to this poet, always, for how they trace the tangles between past and present, for how they obsess over the question of what permanence means.”
        —Taneum Bambrick, author of Intimacies, Received

Author

Sarah Kersey (she/they) is a poet and x-ray technologist who lives in Chelsea, MA. Her work has appeared in Columbia Journal, The Rumpus, The Account Magazine, and elsewhere. They were a finalist for the 2021 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship and have received support from Tin House Workshop. She tweets @sk__poet.

Artwork

Cover by Nora Kelly.