We would like to announce the release of Worn Out Gorgeous by Aaron Ambrose.
Tag: Now Available
SwEP Mid-Month Review: the heart is a muscle
Review by Lizzie Waltner
Kat Heatherington’s poetry collection, the heart is a muscle, brings to light ideas of love that address all aspects of life in a powerful manner and has a deep connection to nature throughout. Her use of, or lack thereof, of capital letters throughout her collection gives the pieces a softness. There are no sharp edges in this collection, which makes it very comforting. These pieces are bright and playful but not downplay the serious issues that wring our hearts.
In her first section, a house by the river, Heatherington’s poem ‘planting poem’ we not only get a taste of spring, but also the touch of the past and endings. For example,
i need to plant more food this year, and less flowers,
but that thin pale green leaf lifts my heart,
and i pray for rain enough to give them all blossoms.
the cat’s grave, her small lilac,
is undisturbed and thriving.
In this small section we see her powerful use of the past contrasting with the present. It not only reflects on the past, the previous dirt being flower filled and a resting space for her cat, but also what it can become which is more sustainable and hearty for the soul, growing more food and the ability of there still being beauty in her memories of her cat that can be represented by the thriving lilac.
This idea of needing more food, could also be applied to more than just nutritional value, and how sometimes all we can do is hope to get through the next months. We all need a little rain sometimes.
The central section is aptly named, stunning transitional moments, as it is not only done stunningly, but addresses some of the toughest realities everyone learns as an adult. In ‘breathing room’ Heatherington tackles the idea of distance and leaving, and the complexity we all feel when walking away from something we love.
now we both have room to breath
and are using it to cry with.
now I can see your stormcloud eyes
filled with pain, and watching me walk away
and not feel all the wind in my sails
fly towards the storm in your heart.
The piece ends with ‘we are both standing’ and I think that hits home hard, because despite sometimes leaving being a difficult idea to grapple with it can have a positive ending, such as being able to stand on ones own.
The last section of this collection, the flammable heart, is admittedly my favorite. This entire section made my heart ache, but in the best way possible. My favorite piece in this section is, maybe. It’s simplicity about wishful thinking with the simple phrase ‘or maybe not’ got me every single time it’s used throughout this piece. This repetitive technique in this poem is repetition at its highest.
and you will visit now and then,
or maybe you won’t,
and i’ll love you anyway,
and send you postcards and text messages
about the rain and the corn and the sweet desert stars,
The way the poems presents this idea of unconditional love, despite being aware of things not working out makes it that much more heart-breaking. At the end of the day, there is always wishful thinking for love and always a realization, that maybe it won’t work out.
Overall, this collection really gets under your skin and claws itself in, sometimes making you feel warm and fuzzy, other times letting those emotions sting throughout. It makes you feel alongside the narrator and presents itself in a relatable manner and uses wonderful metaphors and similes to give visual representation to emotions. Kat Heatherington does a fantastic job in this collection, and anyone with a heart will adore it.
Click the image to order the heart is a muscle from Bookworks ABQ.
the heart is a muscle
by kat heatherington
Kat Heatherington is a queer ecofeminist poet, sometime artist, pagan, and organic gardener. She lives south of Albuquerque New Mexico, in Sunflower River intentional community with a varying number of other humans and cats. Kat’s work primarily addresses the interstices of human relationships and the natural world. She has one previous book, The Bones of This Land, published in 2017 by Swimming with Elephants Publications and available at Bookworks and Harvest Moon Books in Albuquerque, as well as on amazon.com. She can be found online at https://patreon.com/yarrowkat and on instagram at @sometimesaparticle. You can contact the author at yarrow@sunflowerriver.org.
Now Available: Belly-Up Rosehip: A Tongue Blue with Mud Songs
Swimming with Elephants Publications is proud to announce the release of Belly-Up Rosehip: A Tongue Blue with Mud Songs by Tyler Dettloff (with illustrations by Claire Moore). Belly-Up Rosehip is the final publication chosen from our 2019 Open Call for Submissions, leaving with it much promise and enchantment before we open our virtual door again for this upcoming open call. 
Deep-rooted in radiant pride for his Native culture, with a jazzy bluesy-feel woven with lyrical quality, this collection is more superb to finally behold in its fully-fleshed form; and though reading it alone was an awakening, to see it in print with illustrations to partner the poetry has made it all the more wondrous and indeed a publication that we, at SWEP, are happy to home.
Here’s what’s being said about Tyler Dettloff’s work:
This evocative collection invites a gathering of the lost and the found beneath a sheltering shingwak. Peopled with trout and tamarack, Tyler Detloff’s words taste of iron, of spruce gum and honey.
— Robin Wall Kimmerer
“I want my mouth to bloom,” writes Tyler Dettloff. How this mature first collection fulfills that wish! Influenced by jazz and blues, agriculture and fly-fishing, animals and birds, and his Anishinaabe Metis roots, family and culture, Detloff’s poems speak and sing at the same time. His words are mouth-pleasing, like his lines about spruce sap kneading gums, and teeth brushed with maple blossoms and hawk feathers. Tragic political injustices are confronted, but the poems triumph in their celebratory vigour. Even the titles—“Honey High and Nectar Prone,” “Surefooted Spring-fed Salt Lick,” “Thousands of Frogs Croaking Purple”—suggest the sensuous glories and vibrant voices of this book.
— Brian Bartlett
Has there ever been a lovelier word for medicine—indeed, a lovelier medicine—than rosehip? That’s what I thought as I read and was riveted by Tyler Dettloff’s Belly-up Rosehip, a book that loves thorns as much as bloom and sings of stink as beautifully as sweetgrass. When he writes of licking a fishing lure’s hook, or asking the pine needles “to have mercy on my tongue,” Dettloff describes caring for a place so much that you want your mouth where its mouths are, your tongue against its sharpest leaves. No wonder the wilderness in these poems is delirious. Sensual and serious and sometimes necessarily sad, this book charts an intimacy with a Northern Michigan landscape peopled by namegos (lake trout), migizi (bald eagle), and “whips of red willow buds” as well as human mothers, fathers, and lovers. “This is the place I was telling you,” the poet says, inviting us to listen to what the place tells him as he becomes the man the place makes him.
— Dr. Cecily Parks
Assistant Professor
Department of English & MFA Program in Creative Writing
Welcome to the parade, Tyler!
* You can support Tyler by buying Belly-Up Rosehip: A Tongue Blue with Mud Songs on Amazon. And as with all of SWEP’s titles, please review on Amazon and/or Goodreads!
Now Available: “Sell Me Insanity” by Marcial Delgado
Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC is excited to announce the release of “Sell Me Insanity,’ a chapbook of poetry by Marcial Delgado.
“The brujo knows that magic is not a series of complex alchemical spells or mathematical formulas, but comes from the soil, from the people around him, from the roots and connections to the earth he can draw on. This is what Marcial Delgado does with this collection of poetry. He drinks deep from the wellspring of his own history, and the ties that bind him to his community, and his people. These poems breathe with a rare magic that is at once soft spoken and fierce. This is a wonderful collection of poems from one of New Mexico’s most authentic voices.”
-Zachary Kluckman
Join Marcial this Saturday, June 22 at El Chante Casa de Cultura for the “Voices Of The Barrio: Sell Me Insanity Book Release.” This will be an open mic event so please bring a poem to share or just come and listen. There will also be a potluck. This is a free event and all are welcome.
Marcial will have copies for sale at the release, but his book is also currently available through most major distributors. Find it on Amazon.com by clicking here and it can be Primed to you by Saturday for the event.
Light as a Feather; an anthology of resilience is Now Available
Now Available from Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC
Light as a Feather:
an anthology of resilience
Available at Bookworks Albuquerque and all major book distributors.
Click here to order today from Amazon.
“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)
Light as a Feather, Second Edition takes the focus on eating disorders from the mere act of survival into the courageous world of resilience. The authors within, through wit, humor, and ruthless self-reflection, pull back the curtain on what is often misunderstood, even considered too taboo to discuss outside of hushed voices. Eating disorders have long been perceived as a one trick pony. The truth is far more nuanced, spreading across biological sex, gender identity, ethnic background, race, and creed. Light as a Feather feasts its truth before you like a banquet, with prose and poetry shining across the table, delicacies ready to be plucked. Each story is a peek into an individual universe unique in its own existence.
Yes, this book is about disorders, but each writer’s experience could not be more diverse. Yet all are threaded together somehow, with a gentle and raw humanity that will ring true even with the most hesitant of readers. However, do not make the mistake of believing this carefully crafted work will pull its punches. Light as a Feather, Second Edition is violent in its lack of apology. When a group of survivors gather to share their stories, they do so with shocking brutality. In fact, they wear their own flawed humanity so keenly, you cannot help feeling your own internal urgency to unburden the truth.
Let reading Light as a Feather make you brave, as brave as the contributors found within these pages.
Light as a Feather: an anthology of resilience Now Available
Now Available from Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC
Light as a Feather: an anthology of resilience
This collection differs from our first edition of Light as a Feather in that it focuses solely and specifically on eating disorders. We have carried over some of the previous works as well as incorporated many new stories and poems reflecting issues of body dysmorphia, food addiction, and other ailments which fall into the category of eating disorders.
If you have suffered from an eating disorder or know someone who has a disorder, there may be solace in this collection.
Click here to order a copy from Amazon
or
Join us at Bookworks Albuquerque on March 3rd from 3-4 for our book release.
Edited by Courtney Butler, this collections contains work from writers around North America, including
“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
Swimming with Elephants Publications 