WINNER OF THE TUPELO PRESS DORSET PRIZE ::: SELECTED BY MAGGIE SMITH
REWILD, Dorset Prize, Tupelo Press https://www.meredithstricker.com
REWILD is a collection of documentary lyric poetry that explores places that have been ravaged by war and environmental plunder, then left alone from human interference to regenerate and repair. At this moment where we find ourselves in the Anthropocene, the poems hover between ruin and restoration. They envision ways we might begin to tunnel into "another spreadsheet than human ... chromosomal and intricate".
To unbuy ourselves, to rewild our communal lives.
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NEWS: REWILD was submitted to the Pulitzer Prize by Tupelo Press and selected for the Featured Fall Poetry list by the Academy of American Poets. “Flame Hive” was nominated by Tupelo Press for a Pushcart Prize.
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“Meredith Stricker is an architect and cartographer of the new spirit, one that knows to be a poet is to be plural ... she reboots our minds, opening them to atoms, seeds, oceans, buffalo, starfish, and nebulae.
She is a protectress of earth and often communicates in the mysterious way of owls, bees, and whales.”
— Mark Irwin
REWILD is one of the most exciting and original collections I’ve read in years. With the perfect balance of dark humor and vulnerability, this poet grapples with climate change, capitalism, the horrors of human history ... I’m grateful for the wide, generous lens of this book, and this poet, right now. I see—perceive—differently having spent time inside these poems.
– Maggie Smith, Judge’s Citation for Tupelo Dorset Prize
"To unflinchingly explore what we have done to the world through violence, commodification, and greed while also illuminating what might yet be possible, even in places of profound devastation... Stricker’s careful attention draws us to look deeply, forcing us to see both our complicity in horrors and the beauty in even irrigation ditches, ultimately illuminating the possibility of renewal, of 'burning with animals and greenness.'"
– Ruth Dickey
AUTHOR STATEMENT
My hope is for poetry to give full voice and place to the displaced, undocumented and endangered.
REWILD is inspired by many years working in an architecture studio with projects in Big Sur, impacted by successive wildfires grown more severe and widespread through climate change. To feel the force of wildfire is profoundly stressful, humbling,, revelatory. Before rebuilding, the land needs to be cleared of toxic materials. Soil requires healing and protection against flooding and erosion. Attention is focused on restoring plant and animal communities – as well as healing for the whole community that has felt deep loss. These challenges reciprocate my practice of poetry.
Envisioning poetics as habitat restoration, I work with materials that address damage and the possibilities of renewal. This connection between what we love and what threatens it impels us to take action. I'm holding out for a very practical, resourceful, mysterious poetics.
Poems are not decoration, they are not static. They are here to change our lives
Where to find:
from the author books can be signed & inscribed
https://www.meredithstricker.com/contact
tupelo press: https://www.tupelopress.org/product/rewild/
small press distribution https://www.spdbooks.org/Products/9781946482723/rewild.aspx
your local independent bookstore
amazon https://www.amazon.com/Rewild-Meredith-Stricker/dp/1946482722
cover art: Joan Mitchell, courtesy the Joan Mitchell Foundation
