Steel Slides and Yellow Walls - by Alicia Swain (Paperback)

About the Book

Steel Slides and Yellow Walls explores women's identity development and growth. This poetry collection immerses readers in the hidden journeys of adversity and eventual rebirth adult women undergo.

Book Synopsis

In Steel Slides and Yellow Walls, Alicia Swain navigates the labyrinthine journey women undergo to form their identities. Through a feminist lens and distinctive voice, her collection veraciously portrays the trials that forge women into sagacious, resilient adults. From contemplation of how to balance mental health despite knowing what tribulations are sure to come, to the title poem's exploration of how traumatic memories can continue to haunt in the most unexpected situations, Swain offers a look at the diverse experiences that mold women into the tenacious beings they are.

Review Quotes

"In Alicia Swain's debut poetry collection, a woman's voice calls out of the darkness. With intelligence and precision she speaks-of her own trauma, yes, but also of the earth's, of our society's, of womankind's. Deft with metaphor and lyricism, Swain's poems conjure figures of fierce resolve, speaking against silence with courage. These poems are the sound of a soul pouring forth in order to make and remake a world. A moving first book."

-Colleen Abel, PhD, author of Remake and Deviants

"'The harbored rage is a necessity.' These six words from Swain's 'Breaking Silence' piece awaiting inside will be one of the many phrases that cling to your brain after reading her latest work, Steel Slides and Yellow Walls. It is a liberating, empowering and inspiring read in these dark, uncertain times we face as a society. Swain beautifully and intricately weaves stories of pain, anguish, hope, sacrifice and distrust into her prose, which is as witty and biting as it is heartbreaking and raw. From bodily autonomy to a parent's love to abuse and what it means to be a woman facing the systems built against them in today's world-no stone is left unturned. The brevity in each poem speaks volumes, each stanza strung together effortlessly. She takes you on a journey that ends in freedom, clarity and healing. But not before igniting a fire in you that has burned in her for some time."

-Amy David, journalist featured in RVA Magazine, the Henrico Citizen, Midlothian Lifestyle, GayRVA.com, and OutRVA

"In language both fresh and fierce, Alicia Swain's debut poetry collection Steel Slides and Yellow Walls takes the reader on a journey of violent revolution and evolution, a journey toward a young woman's rebirth after years of nearly cracking, nearly drowning. Our guide is a speaker who wrestles, challenges, talks back, and sometimes asks disturbing and ultimately unanswerable questions. These poems offer images of chilling transgressions, ask us to confront uncomfortable memories, witness bodies slammed, bumped, bruised, crushed, and violated. . . .These poems sugarcoat nothing. And yet the collection's final poem, 'Progress, ' offers a lovely coda, tells us 'the death / of one purpose can be as beautiful as a birth, ' and offers hopeful imagery ('an aroma like red cedar, aged pine / desperate to embark on a new stage of life'). These poems show a writer learning about true love in all its forms, most notably self-love. They leave both speaker and reader moved and restored."

-Alison Condie Jaenicke, teaching professor and assistant director of Creative Writing for Penn State University English Department (Retired)

"Alicia Swain writes of trauma, of violence, but also, of survival and hope. She writes of fathers controlling daughters, of stifling the instinct to grow and learn: 'Fire and brimstone' is a phrase meant for death, / not the stench of pages burning or the razing / of common sense. The collection builds and the reader must keep going, to see if these girls, these women, survive. We see them saving others and saving themselves: memories of metal chairs / scraping the church floor, / sunrise a backdrop to strangers / saving lives, often their own. As Swain presses forward, she reminds us the harbored rage is a necessity- and it very much is, for how else do we break free from the constraints that have shackled women for years? She tells us To be a woman / is to be the very foundation / upon which the world must / build itself and what a foundation Swain has built."

-Courtney LeBlanc, author of Her Dark Everything (2025), Her Whole Bright Life (winner of the Jack McCarthy Book Prize, 2023), and others