d’bi.young.anitafrika | rivers…& Other Blackness…Between Us: (Dub) Poems of Love | Gazelle Books

d’bi is a passionate word-warrior with originality and ingenuity to match her creative courage. In this collection, she gushes freely, blending contemporary currents with ancestral resonance to create a daring collection that demands attention. As it bends boundaries and defies definitions, d’bi’s poetry courses along its own path. Surging and swirling, sometimes overflowing the banks, her lines are both delightful and disturbing. On the outside you see a book covered and bound, but on each page there’s raw power and boundless revelation.” — Blakka Ellis Continue reading

Ruth Dallas | The Joy of a Ming Vase | Gazelle Books

As American critic Tom Disch quipped of many vintage poets: ‘friends and pets die, the garden takes on a new significance.’ There are poems in this collection about Dutch Masters, the remembered voice of a deceased soprano, a waterfall, ancient Chinese artefacts, victims of the World Wars, kites and flowers; but each piece is sensitively imbued not only with the poet’s awareness of impending death but also with the incorrigible fragility of life. While Dallas is at home in a number of different modes, her high regard for literary tradition as a form of spiritual realism makes her eminently readable as a disciplined watcher of the seasons. Continue reading

Louise Fabiani | The Green Alembic | Gazelle Books

The alembic was a vessel used in distillation one of the most important processes in the ancient art of alchemy. In these lyrical poems Louise Fabiani explores the prevalence of transformation in Nature as well as in the human realm. She finds alchemy in the creation of haute cuisine from raw ingredients, girlhood rites of passage, Mozart’s suspicious death and, most of all, in the familiar otherness of flora and fauna. Continue reading

Goli Khalatbary | Diary of a Tree | Gazelle Books

Diary of a Tree is a poem in two books from the point of view of a tree. Born in Tehran, Iran in 1944, Goli Khalatbary followed her father through his diplomatic postings as a girl. She saw many countries, many towns, and many landscapes, but could not have childhood friends. Poetry was the revelation of a summer day in a classroom, at 14, when she glanced at the window and was entranced by the way light transformed a drab scene into one that changed her heartbeat. Her earliest studies were in French, in schools and by correspondence. The full power of art occurred to her like another language when, at 18, she took a course in photography in England. In a career in this field spanning over 35 years, she produced mostly portraiture and illustrations for poetry. After moving to India she wrote the first book of “Diary of a Tree”, and showed it as a text exhibition at the India International Center, Delhi. In recent years she has expanded into new media and started working with silver, as well as bronze, iron, stone, and photography. She is now back in Tehran, where she shows her work in annual exhibitions. Continue reading

Victoria Brockmeier | My Maden Cowboy Names | Gazelle Books

Victoria Brockmeier composes a mosaic of storytelling myths, and feminist ideas in her award-winning collection of poems, My Maiden Cowboy Names. Both linguistically playful and genuinely experimental, these poems explore the smallness of human experience. The sumptuousness and vitality of this collection does not sacrifice the capacity for excavating observation and sharp wit. Lush and spacious, these poems revel in the unexpectedly beautiful and the beautifully broken. Continue reading

Pasquale Verdicchio | This Nothing’s Place | Gazelle Books

Revealing the instability of location and the illusory nature of identity this poetry collection traces the edges where the multidimensional blends, blurs, and merges, envisioning a place where form is formless and perception boundless. Taking its title from Emily Carr’s “Klee Wyck”, which describes a strip of land that belongs to Nothing, this compendium explores the indefinite place where imagination and vitality converge to become creativity. Continue reading

Robert Alexander and Dennis Maloney | The House of Your Dream: An International Collection of Prose Poetry | Gazelle Books

This collection is unique in its diversity and includes voices from Europe, Asia, South America, and the United States. Poets include Nin Andrews, Robert Bly, Aleš Debeljak, Russell Edson, Marie Harris, Juan Ramon Jimenez, Peter Johnson, Kim Kwang Kyu, Morton Marcus, Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, Naomi Shihab Nye, Charles Simic, Tomas Transtromer, James Wright, and many others. Continue reading