{"id":6057,"date":"2022-04-05T11:50:17","date_gmt":"2022-04-05T15:50:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/uapress\/?post_type=product&p=6057"},"modified":"2024-09-26T10:18:28","modified_gmt":"2024-09-26T14:18:28","slug":"outskirts","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/uapress\/product\/outskirts\/","title":{"rendered":"Outskirts"},"content":{"rendered":"

In <\/span><\/span>Outskirts<\/span><\/span><\/em>, Heathen continues the life-long praxis to realize Rukeyser\u2019s vision of poetry as a harnessing of human consciousness to change the world. From the lived personal experiences of the author embedded in places of war and genocide, the trauma of violence and rape known firsthand both within and outside of the delineation of conflict zones, <\/span>t<\/span>hey write in concert with fellow outcasts in communal resistance to nationalist and authoritarian impulses both in history and now on the rise around the world and in the United States. With references to punk rock, sacred texts, <\/span>partizankas<\/span> in Yugoslavia, painters<\/span>,<\/span> and other writers, Heathen summons from the <\/span>ouija<\/span> of a larger-than-human ecological consciousness, the connections between past and present, the self and others, (other creatures, other lives, other landscapes) living and dead, enacting this desire through a poetic language that will never cease its longing.<\/span><\/span> Outskirts<\/span><\/span> embodies the call to <\/span>fuck<\/span> the patriarchy and to never stop fighting for a better world through the enlargement of love and community beyond man-made borders<\/span>.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

About the Author<\/h3>\n

Heathen (Heather Derr-Smith) is a poet with four previously published books, <\/span><\/span>Each End of the World<\/span><\/span><\/em> (Main Street Rag Press, 2005), <\/span><\/span>The Bride Minaret<\/span><\/span><\/em> (University of Akron Press, 2008), <\/span><\/span>Tongue Screw<\/span><\/span><\/em> (Spark Wheel Press, 2016) and <\/span><\/span>Thrust <\/span><\/span><\/em>(<\/span>Persea<\/span> Books, 2017). <\/span><\/span>Outskirts<\/span><\/span><\/em> is their fifth book. Heathen is also the founder and director of <\/span><\/span>\u010c<\/span><\/span>uvaj<\/span> se\/Take Care, a <\/span>nonprofit supporting writers<\/span> in conflict zones and communities affected by trauma.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Advanced praise for\u00a0Outskirts<\/em><\/h3>\n

\u201cWhen the girl dies in martyr stories\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 her head goes on singing or testifies,\u201d Heathen writes, and indeed, in this ravishing collection there is both singing and testifying. These poems sweep us up in their lavish intelligence, transformative imagination, extremity of witness, and wounding beauty, and we are changed. Heathen manages a fusion of history and the scorching present tense, and experience, both mythic and embodied. The poems arrive from the outskirts and from the interior, from the dead, and from death itself and its \u201cgradations of dark.\u201d The scope of Heathen\u2019s diction is masterful, from the reportage of arresting detail: \u201cOn the front line we ate black bread stained with cuttlefish ink,\u201d to the hallucinatory: \u201cthe azalea of sex opening \/ and closing its bloom between your legs,\u201d to concrete wisdom, \u201c History has a way of changing your mind, when you\u2019re in the middle of it,\u201d to the visionary: \u201cHow between snipers on the front lines, \/ a beautiful horse appeared, her mane and tail \/ blowing in the wind, snowflakes \/ gathering on her eyelashes.\u201d <\/span>Outskirts <\/span><\/i>is what happens when a writer of rare lyric gifts is willing to put their body on the line, and lives to sing of it.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014Diane Seuss<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Outskirts <\/span><\/i>is a summons from the vivid, living margins,<\/span> a whirl across countries that share the same war-colored sky. With precision and emotional depth, Heathen locates the tender bruises and the living highs found \u201cin extremis,\u201d naming and linking the existential reality of \u201cwomen\u2019s bodies, all history, migration, and broken lands.\u201d Invoking Pilate\u2019s wife who declaims, \u201cI want no country, least of all \/ this one,\u201d Heathen critiques empire while leaping for the throat of misogyny. Yet their hold is tender, compassion threaded as a needle and pulled through these poems. <\/span>Outskirts\u2019 <\/span><\/i>pages burn with an irrepressible fire, its lines the burning coals the poet heaps with love and ferocity.
\n\u2014Han VanderHart<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In Heathen\u2019s <\/span>Outskirts<\/span><\/i>, boys man \u201cdaisy-cutter bombs, burn bags, hellhounds\u201d while women, worldwide, endure war in their litany of daily indignities. The effects resound through the collection, from the middle of war when \u201cneither one of us could remember, even things we knew by heart\u201d to the post-war in which the narrators learn to \u201cforgive God his violence.\u201d The poems careen across the globe, through endless tragedy and moments of light like \u201camethyst in the river\u2019s beach,\u201d arriving at a silence and a re-arming that portends an endless loop of what we have all just endured. Heathen is a poet full of quiet observation, of grace and beauty found even in moments of extreme terror. The silence they leave us with is not unlike a children\u2019s choir singing at the site of a former atrocity\u2014chilling especially in what it projects for the future.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/span>\u2014Alex DiFrancesco<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Outskirts <\/span><\/i>is a combustion engine of desire & violence, a punk devotional to the fringes that Heathen once again masterfully maps with voracious honesty & a sure vision, intricate & blunt. This book roars like a \u201cgirl with kerosene in her mouth\u201d\u2014each poem handing you a lit match to guide your way through the torn terrain, from the siege in Sarajevo to The Troubles in Northern Ireland to former rock idols revealed in their harm. On every page, Heathen honors & loves the women witnesses she looses upon us<\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/i>women who deeply understand that war stories are at heart <\/span>survival <\/span><\/i>stories, even in death\u2014\u201cWhen the girl dies in martyr stories\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 her head goes on singing or testifies.\u201d The spirits this ecstatic collection of poems calls forth will inhabit you, take root in you as \u201cboth the trick and the belief in it.\u201d<\/span>
\n\u2014Amy Woolard<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Outskirts<\/h3>\n

by Heathen<\/h4>\n

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