Out now from Bottlecap Press!
Poetry chapbook (36 pages)

Dreamwake explores the liminal spaces between trauma, memory, and the mind at rest. By examining everyday occurrences both mundane and extraordinary, the poems in this collection aim to make sense of the shocks of modern life by mining dreams for meaning.

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Simultaneously serious and playful, these poems examine environmental destruction, assault, and illness with an eye for irony, nods to pop culture, and an interest in cultural paradigms. Dreamwake is a bold challenge to patriarchal norms, exploring consciousness and memory while leaving readers to wonder which of the disturbing images are imagined and which are all too real.

The collection weaves together personal trauma, movie references, and contemporary existential threats with a lucid dream logic, drawing connections as they spin between experiences, memories, and situations. Common themes within these twenty-two poems include fraught family dynamics, the impossible standards of womanhood, and the perils of life in the Anthropocene. In contrast to the ambiguous narrative contents, the writing style is pointed and decisive, eschewing ornamentation in favor of a direct, plainspoken style. Forms vary across the poems, ranging from something resembling a sonnet to tightly-balled prose poems. Several of the poems share titles, or very nearly do, reinforcing the half-remembered perspective of the collection.