Poem of the Week | April 03, 2017

This week, we are proud to present a new poem by Kimberly Quiogue Andrews and Sarah Blake.

Andrews is a poet, critic, and Pennsylvanian. A two-time Academy of American Poets prize winner and a Pushcart nominee, her work appears in RHINO, The Normal School, The Southampton Review, West Branch, Bomb, and other venues. She is a doctoral candidate in English at Yale University.

Blake is the author of Mr. West (Wesleyan University Press), an unauthorized lyric biography of Kanye West. An illustrated workbook accompanies her first chapbook, Named After Death (Banango Editions). In 2013, she was awarded an NEA fellowship. She lives outside of Philadelphia with her husband and son.

Authors’ note:

We are working on poems that tell the story of a sea witch who has decided to move to land and live among humans. Humans fascinate her and disgust her; she, in turn, fascinates and disgusts. Elements of fantasy allow us to confront particular kinds of sociopolitical absurdities (sexism and capitalism among them). Working collaboratively has been really exciting for us, and has pulled the poems and their protagonist’s desires in unexpected directions. But one constant has always been the sea witch as woman. She knows she’s not a woman in much the same way every woman knows she is not just a woman. But as a type of monstrous demigod, she ultimately sees the human form as a tragicomic sort of beauty. We hope the sea witch stays with us on land for as long as she can stand us.