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“A stunning debut, navigating womanhood, mythology, the body, and the surreal knowledge that dwells within.”—Jane Wong, author of Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City, How to Not Be Afraid of Everything (longlisted for the 2022 Pen/Voelcker Award in Poetry), and Overpour
night myths • • before the body is an ecofeminist interrogation of identity, vulnerability, and relationship that dismantles the boundaries between the body and the natural world to reclaim expressions of power and womanhood.
What are the stories we tell our bodies about our bodies? What are the myths we tell ourselves about ourselves? night myths • • before the body illuminated the dichotomies contemporary women grapple with every day: identity and expectation, self-preservation and doubt, freedom and entrapment, wildness and cultivation. By dissolving the boundaries between the body and the natural world, Abi Pollokoff’s evocative debut deconstructs the essence of womanhood, carrying the reader into a communing at once vulnerable and insistent. night myths • • before the body is a resounding interrogation of being human in a posthuman world.
"Abi Pollokoff’s night myths • • before the body is a stunning debut, navigating womanhood, mythology, the body, and the surreal knowledge that dwells within. These poems linger with sensorial intimacy, stretching 'spandex language,' with wildly inventive language and sonic curiosity…. Pollokoff’s writing is a generous awakening, with poems encased in oozing amber, revealing multitudes of selfhood to be discovered.”
—Jane Wong, author of Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City, How to Not Be Afraid of Everything (longlisted for the 2022 Pen/Voelcker Award in Poetry), and Overpour
"In Abi Pollokoff’s debut collection, we experience a storm of language. But what a carefully calibrated storm it is: one where lineation and the cadence of semantically driven breath create an atmospheric meaning that holds the reader with the same trembling electricity as pre-lightning static. … In this propulsive work, the tension between sound and syntax sings like rain on dry earth. As Pollokoff writes, 'watch the body.' I can’t take my eyes away."”
—Keetje Kuipers, author of All Its Charms, The Keys to the Jail, and Beautiful in the Mouth
"This powerful debut volume sings the body and the communities it makes possible with the human and nonhuman alike. Let us listen. Let us participate in this riveting communion."”
—Karla Kelsey, author of On Certainty
Abi Pollokoff is a poet, editor, and book artist. Her work has appeared in publications such as TriQuarterly, Denver Quarterly, and Guernica, and in such installations as the Summit Sound, the Seattle Convention Center sound installation. Abi was named a 2021 Jack Straw Writer and a 2019 Hugo Fellow. She has held residencies from the Seventh Wave, the Seattle Review of Books and the Alice Gallery. In 2012, Abi won the Anselle M. Larson/Academy of American poets Prize for Tulane University, judged by Caryl Pagel. She was a finalist for the 2022 Coniston Prize, judged by Dorianne Laux, and the 2022 Gatewood Prize, judged by Julie Carr, and a semifinalist for the 2021 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize. Her poem “aubade” was a finalist for the 2019 Omnidawn Broadside Contest, judged by Dan Beachy-Quick. In addition to her own writing, Abi is the managing editor of Poetry Northwest Editions and works in publishing. Abi received her MFA in poetry from the University of Washington. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, by way of Seattle, New Orleans and the Chicagoland area. Find her at https://www.abipollokoff.com/.