Philosophy Alumna Publishes First Full-Length Book of Poetry

Serenade by Brooke Ellsworth, 2017

Brooke Ellsworth’s first full-length collection takes on the question of what poetic expression— “where sentences come from”— looks like if we reject the sources of oppression that pre-exist it.   Taking their cue sometimes from haibun, other times from ekphrasis, the poems in Serenade are formally restless and multi-modal–but sustained by a feminism that defines itself by rage that is collective and private, mythological and feral.  Serenade is a book that arrives as though chewed out by the political and ecological “turnstile event of monstrosity,” and whose authority lies in its nuanced vulnerability: “My authority, reader, is that I am illegible like an oil shale mine spreading its shaky legs”.

BROOKE ELLSWORTH is the author of the chapbooks Thrown (The New Megaphone, 2014) and Mud (dancing girl press, 2015).  Recent work can be found in The Volta, jubilat, The Seattle Review, Spork Press, inter|rupture, among others. She currently lives in Peekskill, NY.  Serenade will be her first full-length collection.

Published: December 11, 2017