Cheer Up, Femme Fatale by Kim Yi-deum (translated by Ji Yoon Lee, Don Mee Choi, and Johannes Göransson)
My all-time favorite poetry collection. Cheer Up, Femme Fatale is provocative, clever, confrontational, and overflowing with the confessions of a chaotic universe.
Witch Wife – Kiki Petrosino
These often surreal poems explore motherhood, marriage, and the body. Mostly written in villanelles, Witch Wife explores the limits of form poetry in beautiful ways.
Autobiography of a Wound – Brynne Rebele-Henry
Autobiography of a Wound is filled with gorgeous, visceral poems that connect ancient fertility figures with contemporary expectations and experiences of women. Rebele-Henry is a young queer poet with a very memorable, incisive voice.
Selected Poems of Anna Akhmatova – Anna Akhmatova (translated by Judith Hemschemeyer and edited by Roberta Reeder)
This is my favorite collection to read during the darkest days of winter. Akhmatova expresses feelings of heartbreak, trauma, and loneliness in deceptively simple and elegant ways.
Witch Hunt – Juliet Escoria
This is a very blunt, dark, and personal collection of poems that I don’t think I’ll forget about any time soon.
miss macross is a Pittsburgh-based multigenre writer who enjoys watching mecha and taking naps. A Best New Poets nominee, her first chapbook, MISS MACROSS VS. BATMAN, was published by Dark Particle/CWP Collective Press in 2018.