Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC is proud to produce several chapbooks, anthologies, and full length poetry collections.
Titles are listed in the order of most recent publication.
Click here to view the Swimming with Elephants Bookstore and order directly from the publisher.
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I’ve Been Cancelling Appointments with My Psychiatrist for Two Years Now
By Sean William Dever
In “I’ve been canceling my appointments with my psychiatrist for two years now,” Sean William Dever captures the essence of living with illness on an emotional level. This short collection serves as a testament to many things: the challenges of battling a healthcare system, the challenges of invisible disorders and diseases, and the challenges we face in ourselves as doubt comes in waves. This work is honest and raw, and sure to connect with many readers.
One of the 2019 selections for Swimming With Elephants Publications annual Open Call for Submissions.
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Shorn: apologies and vows
By Benjamin Bormann
Available on Amazon for $10.95 and available through Kindle for $2.95
“I loved this collection from the title onward, and the spirituality connected me instantly. I am in metaphor heaven. I think the speaker is whispering these poems to me. I have my eyes closed and revel in the metaphor and imagery, in simple, quiet words and lines. I am spiritual and I feel some of the poems are spiritual for me. Perfect words placed in exact space. Strong syntax and enjambment. […] As the theme of loneliness emerges, again, this is very applicable and connectable to any person. I ache with love for this collection. The entire collection is ready to print. Time and energy went into this to create a beautiful collection to test time to the fullest.”
~ Review by Gina Marselle
One of the 2019 selections for Swimming With Elephants Publications annual Open Call for Submissions, Shorn is Benjamin Bormann’s first full-length published collection of poetry.
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Thalassophile 
By Abigayle Goldstein
Sima Ijadi (Cover Art)
Available on Amazon for $10.95
thalassophile, (n.) lover of the sea
With a collection as breathtaking as a calm beach side view, and as striking as a storm at sea, Abigayle Goldstein has perfected the art of this modern-era “diary/dictionary entry” style of writing. From the table of contents, which reads as an introductory poem itself, and onward through each “definition” that follows, there is an undeniable ocean’s flow in the progress of this collection. A story that paints a vivid picture: of tumultuous change, like crashing waves, and perhaps…the eventual calm, and the acceptance of the constant ebb and flow of the sea within us. This collection awakened a new love for the seas of change for me, and I hope it speaks to the thalassophile in each reader. And perhaps in reading, you will find a renewed and empowered love of self.
One of the 2019 selections for the Swimming With Elephants Publications annual Open Call for Submissions, Thalassophile is Abigayle Goldstein’s debut title.
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Pina Bausch
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Light as a Feather; an anthology of resilience
Edited by Courtney A. Butler
Featuring the contributions of:
Available on Amazon for $15.00.
“This collection is a wrenchingly painful, honest, and ultimately beautiful depiction of what people with eating disorders struggle through. Part of the insidiousness of disordered eating is that it operates so definitively in secrecy. It is characterized by locked bathroom doors, midnight binges, furtively skipped meals, and deeply held shame. Shame thrives in darkness, and this book brings in light. It shines on all the pain that is so often hidden away, and in doing so is a message of resilience, healing, and hope.”
~Amanda Knoll, MA, LPC (Licensed Professional Counselor)
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La Diáspora de un Aztlán norteño:
MiChicanidad Creativity as Witnessed in Bilingual Ethno-Poetry and Photography
Narrative by Dr. S.L. Rottschafer, Ph.D.
Photography by Mr. Daniel Combs
Available on Amazon for $20.00
“La Diáspora de un Aztlán norteño” details the unique ‘MiChicanidad’ experience of life on the border in Michigan. This is another definition of Aztlán, as seen on a Northern Border, this time between Canada and Southwest Detroit’s predominantly Mexican American neighborhood. Growth of this Spanish speaking barrio began in the earlier part of the 20th Century due to the rise of migrant labor and employment at factories. Later, the area prospered as those immigrants began to choose to stay. Their addition to the interpretation of life on the border, as well as the community’s vibrant nature, is unparalleled especially as it is defined through creativity.
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Unease at Rest
Poetry by Wil Gibson
Available on Amazon $15.00
“Unease at Rest is an ‘ugly butterfly’, anatomized. It is the death’s-head moth pinning itself under glass. Every poem is another marking on the insect’s back, resembling a human skull. Each one steadfastly reminds its author that it isn’t, in fact, a skull. But each feels about that heavy. In this grossly gorgeous collection, Gibson doesn’t wrestle or toss away the bones on his back. He quietly, humbly carries them. Wil doesn’t fly straight into the lantern’s yawning flame. He stares it down, he names it, and he reaches for it. He does so for us, sparing us the discomfort. And he does it with a steady and trained hand: imperfect palms stretched perfectly. The textual body of his poems, too, flex and fold this way. Every page a ‘soft, awkward, and most authentic’ wing. Wil reaches for the fire with such an ugly human grace, that it explains the ugly human light that swallows us too, by which we are lit from inside, to which we all are bound.”
– Bill Moran – author of “Oh God Get Out Get Out” – Write Bloody Press
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BEKIMI I NËNËS / A Mother’s Blessing
Poetry by Jusuf Gërvalla (Author),
Jack Hirschman (Translator),
Idlir Azizaj (Translator)
Available on Amazon 12.95
In the battle and stand of this people sacrificing and dying to realize its aspiration, we seem like immortals more beautiful and gallant than anyone alive. And there is no power that can stop us on our luminous road.
~Jusuf Gërvalla
Swimming with Elephants Publications is honored to introduce you to our most recent release: Bekimi I Nënës, A Mother’s Blessing, poetry by Jusef Gërvalla, translated by Jack Hirschman and Idlir Azizaj. This is the first time this collection, originally published by the Naim Frashëri Publishing House, in Tirana, Albania in 1983, is translated in the English Language.
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Rock Paper Scissors
Poetry by Mary Oishi and Aja Oishi
Available at Amazon for 14.95
“…this collection carries both the beauty of human resilience and the searing pain of postatomic burning carnage. The poetry, like hope, is an obstinate and sturdy survivor, for ‘what could i do but write songs.’ These verses often push the envelope, asking questions that make more sense than our grammar. ‘are you out there in the stealth night on the edge of blue? listening/ are you loving me for sending you this fix of heartbreak/ slid down metal, taut and wound. electric. are you?’
…haunting, resonant odes and the rhythmic power of promises and truth, poems spread across Hiroshima and Barcelona, Laos and Albuquerque. These poems bring the world into a familial embrace, but spit out the naked power of truth, both personal and political, as if it were a well-chewed chicken bone, gnawed raw. Through it all, this mother-daughter poetic duo reminds us that, in the beauty of human hope, ‘nothing sacred can be lost.’”
-Carmen Tafolla, State Poet Laureate of Texas
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I Bloomed a Resistance From My Mouth
Poetry by Mercedez Holtry
Available on Amazon for $13.50
“Mercedez Holtry’s poetry speaks to the origin stories of her Chican@ and Mestiz@ people. It is a mixed bag of mixed blood and the celebratory songs of family, culture and the history of the la tierra that she has blossomed from. Her poems are resistance and resilience. She is a fierce page poet warrior who also casts her spells from the stage, as a true bruja does. Oppressors beware. Holtry mixes up curses, prayers and incantations with her poetic brew. This is a poet who uses her mas palabras for healing and retribution. Her collection de poesia es muy firme, a true reckoning of what is to come from a generation of woke poets who have much to say and aren’t afraid to say it. “
-Jessica Helen Lopez, ABQ Poet Laureate, Emeritus and Author of the award winning book, Always Messing With Them Boys (West End Press) and cunt. bomb. (Swimming with Elephants Publications).
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bliss in die/unbinging the underglow
Poetry by Bassam
Available on Amazon for $12.95
“Bassam writes poems that feel like slow motion car crashes where, at every turn, you’re also reassured that it’s ok to feel like this, like even if nothing is going to be ok, there is strength to hold like a parking brake, like the axis of a planet. Bassam’s words are a gut punch, a pull to beating heart chest, a hand that holds yours in the bleak. One senses that the act of poetry for Bassam is truly one of survival. What a strength it takes to show our deepest insecurities, to not ask for forgiveness. To not be the hero of your own story. Bassam is a bright non binary voice. One that asks not for acceptance, but simply is, and tells the stories of body and mind that is so intimate and accessible to those of us who endlessly battle with our shapes, our selves. What a gift to give.”
—Charlie Petch, Spoken Word Artist, Playwright, Musician
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from below/denied the light
Poetry by Paulie Lipman
Available on Amazon for $15.00
Out of Denver, Colorado, Paulie comes “from below” and rises to join our parade of writers. A two time National Poetry Slam finalist, Paulie Lipman is a loud Jewish Queer poet, performer, and writer. His work has appeared in the anthology ‘We Will Be Shelter’ (Write Bloody Publishing) as well as The Emerson Review, Drunk In A Midnight Choir, Voicemail Poems, pressure gauge, and Prisma (Zeitblatt Fur Text & Sprache).
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Nail Gun and a Love Letter
Poetry by Beau Williams
Available on Amazon for $15.00
“This collection of poems alternately pierces the reader with astute and heartbreaking observations (Good Drums is a particularly devastating musing on white, male American-ness) while at the same time using evocative language to spar with and challenge the ideas of belonging and connection and love. These poems invite the reader to contemplate what it means to come from somewhere, and how it feels to long for a place that isn’t home, but could be. They invite us to see the mundane as essential, and to see and celebrate the things that connect us to our identity. The title of this collection is apt; like a nail gun, these poems violently pierce, but do so in service to building something sturdy and sheltering, and every one is a love letter to the dance that makes us who we are.”
– Sherry Frost, Educator
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The Promethean Clock
Poetry by Manuel (MJR) Montoya
Available on Amazon for $12.95
“These poems are a way of telling you what I saw, at least the remnants of those things. My poems have codes in them. They have forms that have long since lost favor. They have rhyme schemes and syllabic structures of old and new places. They have formlessness that abides by current trends, but embraces none of them wholesale. They are, as Milton once wrote, poems that attempt to champion the unnamable and the indeterminable. Mine are the equations of empty sets and irrational numbers as much as they are of ritual and nostalgia. I have decided not to appease all critique. I am at rest, because the people I trust most have said that there is something in them, something of where I am from, what became of my home, and what is becoming in the world. And for the first time in a long time I’m not ashamed of my part in this story. With all that I am, let these poems be a part of my apology to the world and to my beloveds, an apology for each moment as it passes to the next…”
~from the preface
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Wild Horses
Poetry by Courtney A. Butler
Cover Art by Judy Marquez
Available on Amazon for $10.95
“Courtney A. Butler has written a book that manages to be strong and fierce while remaining innocent and full of wonder. Balancing the line between jaded adult and hopeful youth while painting the clearest picture of why the writing evokes that same sentiment- this is a fun, emotionally fulfilling collection that I will enjoy the 37th time as much as the 1st. I’ll be pre-ordering her next book, as there will surely be many more.”
-Wil Gibson, Author of Quitting Smoking, Falling In and Out of Love, and Other Thoughts About Death
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the bones of this land
Poetry by Kat Heatherington
Cover Art by Gwendolyn Prior
Available on Amazon for $10.95
Now Available at the UNM Bookstore
“Turn these pages and “the barrel jumps/ in your hand and the stock / kicks your shoulder.” Inside Bones of This Land, you’ll find a love taut as cells on the brink of dividing. Whether cancer, death, compassion or even affection rips humans apart, we’re all gonna get there. As Heatherington writes, “Everyone’s father dies of something.” These poems share one woman’s journey and let each of us decide how we feel –and perhaps even see what we missed out on. Kudos. “
–Lisa Gill
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Elegy for a Star Girl
Poetry by Christopher Grillo
Available on Amazon for 12.95
Each poem in Elegy for a Star Girl is categorized into three elements of existence: The Other World, The Here and Now, and Transcendence, and each poem is a combination of life experiences, Science Fiction, and space. These poems illustrate great depth within the soul, body, and mind, and the illuminating language and imagery express the universe as a metaphor. Life is questioned and answers are hard to find. Life is a journey that must be experienced from above. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.
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Morena
Poetry by Eva Marisol Crespin
Available on Amazon for 10.95
Burque native, Eva Marisol Crespin is a slam poet, writer and activist. She has been writing and performing poetry since the age of 12. Eva has been a part of a number of youth and adult slam teams who have seen many final stages. She continues to slam and write poetry in her hometown of Albuquerque. She is currently going to school to be a social worker, working as a server and teaches writing workshops in schools, recovery centers, and in the community when possible. She identifies as a queer, Xingona, Xicana, sculpting words, and ripping herself open to speak her truth.
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For Those Who Outlast Their Pain
Poetry by Niccolea Nance
Available on Amazon for 15.00
This book is part of a charity project to bring awareness to sexual assault. All profits above the cost of printing the book and shipping will go to further the cause. Proceeds will be divided between local women’s shelters, the National Sexual Violence Resource Center and The Outlast Project.
Although this book was inspired by Sexual Assault Awareness Month, instead of being a collection of “rape poems” it is a journey from the beginnings of pain through the darkness and struggle all the way to the healing, strength, and light on the other side. It begins in childhood and works its way to womanhood in a way that is laced with universal truths about pain and redemption.
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22
Poetry by Gigi Bella
Available at Amazon for 12.95
This is Gigi Bella’s first full length collection of poetry. Encompassing many of her most popular performance pieces and a few new additions, this collection is a perfect representation of her current accomplishments as a young writer.
Pick up a copy today to help her get to WOWPS 2017, and don’t forget to leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon.com.
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You Must Be This Tall To Ride
Poetry by SaraEve Fermin
Available at Amazon for 10.95
“In her second book, You Must be This Tall to Ride, SaraEve Fermin does hard work with that which so many poets avoid; the poems here are not merely “how I got through/behold my strength” but rather, the nuanced and measured stories that happen after life’s big moments. In defiance of a life filled with so many “one-step-back” erosions, she shows us how simple actions can be the victories that enable us to move one-step-forward; she shows us how every day, just-showing-up love means more, in the long run, than capital L fireworks ever can.”
~Ryk McIntyre,
performance poet
editor and author of After Everything Burns
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Quitting smoking, falling in and out of love, and other thoughts about death
Poetry by Wil Gibson
Available at Amazon for $15.00
Wil Gibson’s’ newest book is a crime scene of honesty. What I mean is, he peels his own heart open for you and invites you to the dinner. Upon reading ‘I am gone, I am almost always gone’ the floor feel out beneath me– only a poet can make life with epilepsy seem like a long sleep, not the tripwire dance we are lost in. Part survival, part motivation, I tore through this collection– and then started from the beginning again.
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Girls Who Fell in Love with War
Poetry by Jennifer E. Hudgens
Available at Amazon for $10.95
With this collection of poetry, Jennifer E. Hudgens delves into the mess of life, dissects the carcass and sucks the meat off the bones—the meat being experience, leave the bones lying stark against the page. Each poem is both mourning and a celebration. The celebration of survival thrums in the silence. These poems will gut you and make you cry glory; have you coming back to the feast of being over and over again.
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Mothers & Daughters
A La Palabra: The Word is a Woman Anthology
Compiled and Edited by Jessica Helen Lopez & Katrina K Guarascio
Photography by Mariah Bottomly
Available at Amazon for $14.95.
Available at Bookworks ABQ $10.00
Mothers & Daughters is the second book published as an anthology produced by La Palabra – The Word is a Woman. It is a collection of poetry and some non-fiction prose. Similar to our first self-titled book, it is an effort of workshop participants (in conjunction with the annual Women & Creativity month-long series), as well as a call for national submissions. In this collection you will surely find stories like your own, and some not at all. By way of black and white photography, you will be invited into the home and hearth of women, the familial ties that bind mothers to their daughters and vice versa. It is an intergenerational journey of unconditional love, compassion, faith and sometimes loss, heartbreak and even disappointment. Here are poems and stories of humor, exasperation, healing, and protectiveness. Here are stories about you and yours. La Palabra is a humble collective, a steady heartbeat, a clanging gong. Our publications are modest, but steeped with fierce pride and joy in the Word. An everlasting fidelity in the name of Woman.
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Saltwater Under Brittle Sky
Poetry by Lori DeSanti
Available at Amazon for $10.95
Lori DeSanti’s Saltwater Under Brittle Sky is a lot like taking a walk through a sun shower on your own island, like waiting for the clouds to break and dry any wet that remains on your cheek—from dew to tears. This collection of poems is compact but beautiful, unpretentious in their succinct on page presentation. Each of the nineteen pages is no more than two pages long, and the collection is small enough to tuck into a back or inside coat pocket, a collection asking to be read in the open air, under trees and next to running streams.
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My Blood is Beautiful
Poetry by Mercedez Hotlry
Available at Amazon for $10.95
Mercedez Holtry is a slam poet, writer, student, mentor, and Chicana feminist who focuses on bringing out her roots, experiences and lessons learned through her poetry in hopes that they embrace her people and other artists around her. She has represented ABQ on multiple final and semifinal stages for national poetry events. Mercedez is passionate about spoken word and aspires to continually learn all she can about her art through working and slamming for her community.
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Language of Crossing
Poetry by Liza Wolff-Francis
Available at Amazon for $10.95
Liza Wolff-Francis’s Language of Crossing is a collection of poetry that mirrors the true heart-stories along the US/Mexico border. Giving face, voice and humanity to all those who make their way across fronteras, her work is that of a necessary endeavor. She writes of a reality that must be ignored no longer. It is the struggle, strife, and violence that is endured by those who flee their country in hopes of a better life. Her poems, brutally honest and minute, rouse compassion as all good poetry must and begs the question of accountability. Language of Crossing is a political outcry, a finely tuned collection of endurance of a people, and a passionate advocacy for all to take notice. Wolff-Francis is a real activist planting poetic prayer flags across the vastness of a desert.
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They Are All Me
Poetry by Dominique Christina
Available at Amazon for $14.95
They Are All Me, Dominique Christina’s second full length collection of poetry and third book, collapses that separation between compassion and rage. Here is a book of a linguistic brilliance and of praise for the entourage of African-American heroes and martyrs who are part of all our souls’ memories.
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Litanies Not Adopted
Poetry by R.B. Warren
Available at Amazon for $12.95
Litanies Not Adopted is a beautiful, authentic collection of experiences, odes to loved ones, and lyrical confessions. It is an honest and raw account of one man’s lifetime and the people who have come and gone.
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Trigger Warning: Poetry Saved My Life
Compiled and Edited by Zachary Kluckman
Available at Amazon for $14.95.
For decades, the coffee houses, darkly shadowed bar stools, inner city apartments, and subway stations have sounded the echo of this phrase – poetry saved my life. Poets worldwide have uttered these words to one another like a scared truth, a shared secret. Not all of them certainly, but enough. Enough to make this little tome more than a mere collection of voices, but a vital, celebratory reminder that poetry still opens the door for those whose screams are strangled by pillows. Here are the sounds of pleasure heralded against shoulders, the uplifted voices and stark tremolos of those who have survived the turmoil and trembling because they found something so deceptively simple – so heart-wrenchingly real.
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Gnarly
Poetry by Danielle Smith
Available at Amazon for $10.95
“Gnarly” is not what you expect: a collection of love poems, this is not an assemblage of sappy sonnets or couplets. Smith catches the reader off-guard with her close attention to sound, metaphor, and form as she explores the chambers of a bruised heart. Pumping out vivid imagery, there is music in these poems that should make you read each word carefully and out loud, relishing in Smith’s clever twists of language. A compendium of catharsis, ‘Gnarly’ will make you realize just how far you can fall in love with heartache.
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Storm
Poetry by Kristian Macaron
Available at Amazon for $10.95
Cover Art by Gwendolyn Prior
Kristian Macaron’s first chapbook of poetry features her various experiences in New England during the midst of some of the most powerful storms to pass through in the last several years. Her poetry is raw, honest, and revealing. This is a wonderful for collection for anyone who has experience the confusing effects of natural disaster as well as those who may have never had such an experience.
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Observable Acts
Poetry by Kevin Barger
Available at Amazon for $10.95
Cover Art by James Burbank
Kevin Barger is a performance poet, writer, and retired slam organizer based in Asheville, NC. He was instrumental in bringing slam poetry back to popularity in Asheville after its rise, fall, and subsequent misfirings in the area by helping to lay the groundwork for Poetry Slam Asheville from 2008 through 2011. He has also appeared on many other stages in and around the Carolinas including the Lake Eden Arts Festival, Lexington Avenue Arts and Fun Festival, the Individual World Poetry Slam, and Southern Fried in which he was on the first team from Asheville sent to Southern Fried in nearly a decade. Now, semi-retired from the slam scene but itching to get back on stage again, he has compiled old favorites and new material in Observable Acts; his first endeavor onto the published page.
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Passion, Provocation, and Prophecy
Interview and Poetry by Jack Hirshman and Justin Desmangles
Available at Amazon for $10.95.
I am excited and honored to say that this slim collection is now available through Swimming with Elephants Publications.
We are thrilled to welcome Jack Hirschman as our latest author.
This book is not a collection of Pasolini’s work, instead it serves as an ode to him. Beginning with an interview between Jack Hirschman and Justin Desmangles, and followed by two arcanes written by Hirschman which reflect on the man Pasolini was, this slim edition is a companion piece to honor a voice silenced before its time.
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A Fire of Prayer
Poetry and Photography by Gina Marselle
Available at Amazon for $15.00.
Gina Marselle, M.A.Ed, resides in New Mexico with her husband and children. She is a high school English teacher, and finds enjoyment in being creative through poetry, painting, and photography. She has been awarded three grants for various philanthropy poetic projects. In addition, she has published poetic work with The Sunday Poem Online Series, in the Alibi, the Rag, SIC3, Adobe Walls: An anthology of New Mexico poetry, Catching Calliope, Fix and Free Poetry Anthology I and II, and La Palabra Anthology I and II.
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…but my friends call my Burque
Poetry by Manuel Gonzalez
Available at Amazon for $10.95.
Available at Bookworks ABQ $10.00
About the collection:
The first complete collection from beloved New Mexico poet Manuel Gonzalez contains many of his most popular performance pieces along with poems he has used and shared in classrooms throughout the state.
Manuel states: “I’m proud to be from New Mexico, and to me it’s more than just green chile and desert. It’s seeing the value of famila and respect. It’s the Rio Grande valley and Santuario de Chi-mayo. It is feasts, dance, poetry and prayer.”
This collection honors New Mexico, her traditions and her beauty.
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Of Small Children / and Other Poor Swimmers
Poetry by Brian Hendrickson
Available at Amazon for $12.95.
Available at Bookworks ABQ $10.00
About the collection:
Of Small Children / And Other Poor Swimmers is centered in the push-pull of place. Hendrickson wants to leave behind his Florida childhood, where every memory is still moist, but he continues “calling on the voices” and crossing back, wading into love, loss and danger with vivid imagery.
— Lauren Camp, author of three collections of poetry, including One Hundred Hungers, and winner of The Dorset Prize (Tupelo Press)
Brian Hendrickson demands the inclusion of the real press of the discursive and meditative into his poems, by juxtaposing multiple levels of diction, and by frequently shifting between the anecdotal, the essayistic, and the lyrical. Through his careful use of these techniques, Hendrickson is able to achieve James Sculley’s ideal of “audacious speaking”: he refuses to capitulate either to the lyrical moment or the abstraction, and so his poetry exists and persists as an urgent place for utterance of consciousness.
— Don Winter, author of seven collections of poetry, including Saturday Night Desperate
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Periscope Heart
Poetry by Kai Coggin
Available at Amazon for $15.00.
Available at Bookworks ABQ $15.00
About the collection:
In Coggin’s debut collection of poetry, the Heart is the lens through which she leads us in words. Every line is infused with beauty and light and a yearning that is inescapable, palpable. Her voice is precise and piercing, like a song you hum without knowing, because it is already inside you. Her poems carry the fluttering soul, with vivid imagery that is tangible and evocative. PERISCOPE HEART is the sound of wings opening.
“I first met Kai Coggin as a blazing fire of energy, a supernova educator in the Houston high schools. Now she is on her light path teaching through her own poetry. Her words are spells, chants, prayers, invocations. Thank you, Kai, for work of the spirit, for illuminations like desert thunder and a night sky of benedictions.”
– Sandra Cisneros author of House on Mango Street
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Heartbreak Ridge
Poems by Bill Nevins
Available at Amazon for $10.95.
Available at Bookworks ABQ $10.00
“Heartbreak Ridge is a campfire of the resistance, a place where all kinds of poems-from jeremiads, scourgings, and passionate rants to absolutely beautiful works of love and loss-gather between its covers. Bill Nevins is a truth-teller,and what he has to tell us about the last half century of American life and politics is a matter of highly charged poetic urgency.”
~Terence Winch, author of Boy Drinkers,
When New York Was Irish and many other works of poetry, music and fiction.
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The Fall of a Sparrow
Poetry by Katrina K Guarascio
Available at Amazon for $12.95.
Available at Bookworks ABQ $10.00
About the collection:
Loved Always Tomorrow
A Chapbook by Emily Bjustrom
Available at Amazon for $10.95.
Available at Bookworks ABQ $10.00
About the collection:
my verse,
Poetry by Katrina K Guarascio and Photography by Shawna Cory
Available at Amazon for $14.95.
Available at Bookworks ABQ $10.00
From the Preface:
When one woman creates we know this as spell casting. When one or more of these female titans get together with the intent to produce art we call this act of goddess: splitting cells. Lord help us all if they begin to shed clothes, vulnerabilities, secrets, traumas, and metaphors that bounce like agitated atoms. This is the naked truth shook loose from words and physical form. This is poet Katrina K Guarascio and photographer Shawna Cory when they decided to comingle and author a book.
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To Anyone Who Has Ever Loved a Writer
A Chapbook by Nika Ann
Available at Amazon for $10.95.
Available at Bookworks ABQ $10.00
A little about the book:
To truly love a writer a certain level of understanding is required. This short anthology expresses, through poetry and prose, the innermost working of the writer’s mind, or at least this one particular writer’s mind. This is not a collection of apologies or excuses, but explanations and glimpses into a psyche often kept private and secluded. Hopefully exploring this work will give perspective and understanding to those with writers in their lives, as well as the writers who may feel they need an ally to their madness.
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Verbrennen
A Chapbook by Matthew Brown
Available at Amazon for $10.95.
Available at Bookworks ABQ $10.00
A little about the poet:
Matthew Brown is a young poet born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Though relatively new to slam poetry, he has preformed alongside some of Albuquerque’s most seasoned poets, and represented New Mexico two years in a row as a member Unidos Poetry Collective at Brave New Voices. Matthew Brown’s poems expose social, racial, and economic inequalities from a Hispanic, gay, and African American perspective.
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September
Poetry by Katrina K Guarascio
Photography by Gina Marselle
Available at Amazon for $14.95.
Available at Bookworks ABQ $10.00
A little about the book:
A collection of poetry by Katrina K Guarascio, accompanied by the photography of Gina Marselle, September: traces of letting go is a beautiful collaboration sharing the efforts of these two artists. This collection contains poetry from Guarascio’s previous out of print books as well as new poetry which has never been previously published. This is the first publication combining the works of these two artists but hopefully will not be the last.
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Cunt. Bomb.
A Chapbook by Jessica Helen Lopez
Available at Amazon for $10.95.
Available at Bookworks ABQ $10.00
A little from the foreword:
These precious jewels of epiphany continue to guide me as I uncover for myself women, gender-identified women and allies who advocate for equality, who fight against the oppression and pillage against women and of course who dive whole-heartedly into the vastness and mysterious complexity of unbridled sexuality. Yes, I love the cunt. Yes, I have one. And yes, I will continue to use the word because it is not disparaging but rather has been wrangled into submission for hundreds of years; only to be used against women and girls as a tool for abuse and means of brutal capitulation. For those who recoil at the thought of the title of this humble chapbook, I invite you to sit and listen/read for a bit. The poems included are but a small journey stitched together to create my life as a mother, daughter, sister, poet, and woman of color. Woman. Cunt.
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Some of it is Muscle
Poetry by Zachary Kluckman
Available at Amazon for $10.95.
Available at Bookworks ABQ $10.00
A little about the book:
The poems in this collection are meant to be read from beginning to end. These are poems of endurance, written with the conviction that “we survive” is the thread that connects the body to the spirit, and from that recognition comes an appreciation of the beauty that exists in the simple acts of living. These are poems that celebrate the anvil and the hammer, those things that shape and reshape us.
Swimming with Elephants Publications 
Impressive. Most impressive.
Wow, what a stable of writers and writings!