River City Fires - by Derek Annis (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

In this haunting and complex collection, Derek Annis unearths a surreal geography of trauma. These traumas are both personal and planetwide, spanning different ecologies and personal concerns.

Annis' word choice and language are ethereal but focused. Their singular voice the hidden, otherworldly parts of our ecosystem, turning them over with specificity and attention.

River City Fires is confessional poetry viewed through a hazy kaleidoscope. Simultaneously dreamlike and concrete, Annis connects the macro geographies of earth with the intimate geographies of revealed traumas.

This stunning collection will resonate with anyone looking for poems about place that still feel personal.

This collection also features a bespoke interview with the writer at then end of the book, delving deeper into the craft, influences, and life behind their work.

Review Quotes

"To make of bewilderment itself a world serviceable enough to live in-to imagine a way through: this seems the chief imperative of River City Fires, whose astonishing poems hover around fires both actual and metaphorical in a landscape/riverscape/forestscape both recognizable and surreal. These are poems whose meanings I can't always parse-and I don't feel I'm supposed to; instead, they seem like slant confessions, not of trauma, but from trauma; they articulate the triumph of survival, they fragment what's whole and, instead of restoring it, reimagine the possibilities for wholeness. 'Blessed are the burned. The blistered/inherit the earth.' A terrific collection."

"River City Fires is beautiful, elemental, and oracular. It's as steeped in threat as any fable or holy book, and the darkness is forever manifesting into fears and friends. Like the book of Proverbs armed with a rifle, every poem transforms themselves at each line break's dire revelations. Surreal and archetypal, this city and its fires speak (as many fires do) to god, asking 'make death/turn away.' These poems will haunt you with the most gorgeous aching."