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Given, the debut poetry collection of Liza Katz Duncan, was the winner of the 2022 Autumn House Rising Writer Prize in Poetry. A tender collection that considers the idea of home and family, and untangles the deep personal and ecological loss as a result of Superstorm Sandy's destruction of the New Jersey Shore.
Given is a poignant exploration of the unpredictable shifts that shape our lives. Duncan conjures her home, the New Jersey Shore, in clear and unsentimental lines: 'Call of the grackle, / whine of the turkey vulture. Blighted clams, // raw and red in their half-shells.' Duncan’s poems also explore the devastation brought to this place and its community by Superstorm Sandy and the continued impacts of climate change.
Interwoven into this thread is the narrator’s miscarriage; the parallels between the desecrated landscape and the personal catastrophe further contribute to the layers of tenderness in this collection, as Duncan urges us to remember and to witness. Despite tragedy and loss, Given is imbued with persistent, dogged hope, showing how survival persists amongst the wreckage, and from this debris is a path towards healing our grief.
"Given by Liza Katz Duncan is one of the strongest debuts I’ve read in a long time. In an age where market and media forces encourage us to silo our griefs, Given makes the necessary argument that our losses intersect and inform one another: from the loss of a child to the loss of a home, a town, a shoreline, a way of living. The poems are emotionally moving and impressive in formal range, from short lyrics to longer sectioned sequences, incantatory litanies to poems in received forms. In Given, Duncan brings home the lived ramifications of dailiness in an age of ecological peril. The book is a necessary addition to our developing libraries of eco-poetry and docu-poetry and poetry period—Given is a must-read." —Dana Levin, author of Now Do You Know Where You Are