Celebrate Poetry Month with Swimming with Elephants Publications and Bookworks this April!

During the month of April 2018, you will once again be able to find Swimming with Elephants Publications titles on the shelves of Bookworks, known as one of Albuquerque’s best local, independent bookstore.

Available titles range from our newest releases to our classics, but our supplies are limited so get there early and don’t pass up a purchase because it may not be there on your next visit.

All SwEP titles available in the store will be specially priced for $10, except of a small group which will be priced at $5 a book, while supplies last.

We will celebrate Poetry Month with Bookworks at our reading on April 21, 2018, from 3pm-5pm.

Check out our titles at Bookworks ABQ including these New Releases

from below/denied the light
Poetry by Paulie Lipman

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).

Nail Gun and a Love Letter
Poetry by Beau Williams

“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 everyone is a love letter to the dance that makes us who we are.”

– Sherry Frost, Educator

I Bloomed a Resistance From My Mouth
Poetry by Mercedez Holtry

“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

Wild Horses
Poetry by Courtney Butler

“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

The Promethean Clock or Love Poems of a Wooden Boy
Poetry by MJR Montoya

“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

the bones of this land
poetry by Kat Heatherington

“The Bones of this Land is an exquisite collection of poetry and craft at its apex. Heatherington is an expert at subtle but powerful verse. Her words read like a whisper but resonate like a bomb. Here is a book that will leave you satiated, but curiously enough, hungry for more. “

~Jessica Helen Lopez, author of Always Messing With Them Boys, cunt. bomb., Language of Bleeding and a recipient of the Zia Book Award