Red Ocher

March 2023
University of Arkansas Press
Finalist for the Miller Williams Poetry Prize
Order: University of Arkansas Press | Bookshop.org

In Jessica Poli’s Red Ocher, the wild mortality of the natural world merges with melancholic expressions of romantic loss: a lamb runt dies in the night, a first-time lover inflicts casual cruelties, brussels sprouts rot in a field, love goes quietly and unbearably unrequited. This is an ecopoetics that explores the cyclical natures of love and grief, mindful that “there will be room for desire / again, even after it leaves / like a flood receding, / the damaged farmhouses / and washed-away bridges / lying scattered the next day / amid silt and debris.” Throughout, Poli’s poems hold space for the sacred—finding it in woods overgrown with thorny weeds, in drunken joy rides down rural roads, and in the red ocher barns that haunt the author’s physical and emotional landscapes.

More in Time: A Tribute to Ted Kooser

March 2021
University of Nebraska Press
Available through UNP and Bookshop

Winner of a 2022 Nebraska Book Award in Special Poetry
Chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as a Young People’s Poet Laureate Monthly Book Pick for the Poetry Foundation

More in Time is a celebration and tribute to Ted Kooser, two-time U.S. Poet Laureate, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and Presidential Professor of the University of Nebraska. Through personal reflections, essays, and creative works both inspired by and dedicated to Kooser, this collection shines a light on the many ways the midwestern poet has affected others as a teacher, mentor, colleague, and friend, as well as a fellow writer and observer-of-the-world. The creative responses included in this volume are reflective of the impact Kooser has had in his connections to other writers, while also revealing glimpses of his distinct way of seeing.

Chapbooks

Canyons | BatCat Press, 2018

Alexia | Sixth Finch, 2015

Glassland | JMWW, 2014

The Egg Mistress | Gold Line Press, 2013