“A lush, fierce, primal work in which the broken world still rotates and orbits—not for us as we could project, not as a metaphor for redemption—but we get to ride on it anyway. Eliza Rotterman has a voice unlike any other and familiar too: she writes, in finely faceted jewels of language set in strong lines that cut as they connect, of a woman in her body / a woman on this planet ever-aware, observing everything, suffering, believing, tracking, clocking, ticking, as she must.

The poet explodes her being for her poetry—nothing escapes—and she gives that explosion to the reader, in the form of exquisite, precise, deep beauty. I could not be more grateful that this gift was made and held faithfully to its purpose: to show us the chaos at the heart of desire, the raw stillness at the center of hope.”

—Brenda Shaughnessy, author of Our Andromeda and judge for the Snowbound Chapbook Award

Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-946482-05-1

Eliza Rotterman grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and holds an MFA from the University of Oregon. Her poems have appeared in Colorado Review, Poetry Northwest, and Los Angeles Review, and she was awarded the Kay Evans fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon.

No information is available.

The multiplying wood

I call this pageantry, your green
evering towards blue, an intelligent
loneliness. I feel supernatural,
consider one day a child
may ease down from the sky.
We’ll collect moss and lichen,
adapt to the bitterness of roots.

There is a shoreline trail,
a rankled lake. I throw rocks
to please her, devise a plan
for a raft. Mother and child
paddling out, a blue forest chorusing,
the sun begins the last era of light.

.4 lbs

6 × .5 × 9 in

Finalist of 2019 Oregon Book Award Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry.

Winner of the Snowbound Chapbook Award.