Anique Sara Taylor‘s fierce wind-whipped poems pull me, drag me, shake me and make me see–seasons, oceans, stars, buds set to burst and “the universe of a single cell.” They make me feel–the joy of a deer tick tunneling in, “the wound of a new poem,” my own “nerves of scraped glass.” She has the gift of reminding us we are alive in all our senses, and then beyond our senses, far beyond, into prayer and into the void. “Abandoning all illusion of safety, / it is today again.” —Alicia Ostriker /New York State Poet Laureate / Academy of American Poets Chancellor The Volcano and After: Selected and New Poems 2002-2019 (Pitt Poetry Series)
“Maybe // this time / I will tell you as much as you can bear,” Anique Sara Taylor states, speaking as much to herself as to her readers, recognizing that she feels “Naked without my shawl of words.” In poems written in “the curved alphabet of wild phlox,” Taylor views our longings and vulnerabilities through “the unmendable beauty” of nature, reckoning “We sleep / alone so many years” toward some deeper understanding of our lives. If “Our fragile ribbons / unravel,” they do so toward “a version of Paradise / that forgives us everything we’ve ever done.” If I quote so often here from these poems, it’s because Where Space Bends is filled with such memorable and musical phrasings, and with such moving wisdom. I recommend this book to anyone who possesses a heart capable of hurt, ears that open to secret frequencies, and a tongue that savors each word spun so slowly in the mouth. —Michael Waters / Caw (BOA Editions)
She writes: “the bones of my hand tucked underneath my skull”. She writes: “I rush to the shower to scrub // with rose soap, / as water all around me turns to tears”. The poems here sound with utter depth and emotional resonance, singing even as they weep. Such work is a devotion, an articulation so strange and precise that I close the book knowing I’ve encountered a breathprint so unique and singular that the poems, even as they carry loss, renew me. I fall in love with World again and again, and am astonished by the chance to Be. What a profound gift this is. —Aracelis Girmay / The Black Maria (BOA Editions)
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Anique Sara Taylor’s chapbook Civil Twilight is Blue Light Press’ 2022 Prize Winner, forthcoming, Spring 2023. Her full-length poetry book Where Space Bends was published in May 2020, Finishing Line Press. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared in Rattle, Common Ground Review, Adanna, St. Mark’s Poetry Project’s The World, Cover Magazine, Stillwater Review, Earth’s Daughters, The National Poetry Magazine of the Lower East Side among others. Her chapbook Poems is published by Unimproved Editions Press. Her work has appeared in several anthologies: The Lake Rises (Stockport Flats Press), Pain and Memory (Editions Bibliotekos, Inc.), Veils, Halos and Shackles: International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women (Kasva Press) among others.
Taylor has co-authored works for HBO, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster and a three-act play performed by Playwrights Horizons and Williamstown Theatre Festival. Her Holocaust poem “The Train” was a 2019 finalist in Charter Oak’s Award for Best Historical Poem. Where Space Bends in earlier chapbook form was chosen Finalist by both Minerva Rising and Blue Light Press in 2014 Chapbook Competitions and Under the Ice Moon was chosen finalist in 2015 by Blue Light Press.
An award-winning artist, Taylor’s art has been featured in numerous galleries including The Bruce Museum, CT, The Monmouth Museum, NJ, The Noyes Museum, NJ, The Puffin Foundation, NJ, The Cork Gallery at Avery Fisher Hall, NYC, The Bronfman Center Gallery, NYC.
Taylor teaches/taught Creative Writing for Benedictine Hospital’s Oncology Support Program, Bard LLI , Writers in the Mountains. She holds a Poetry MFA (Drew University), Diplôme (The Sorbonne, Paris), a Drawing MFA (With Highest Honors), Painting BFA (Pratt Institute), and a Master of Divinity Degree. She studied Literature at Antioch College and Poetry at St. Mark’s Poetry Project with Alice Notley, then Bernadette Mayer. She’s been a regular at Wallson Glass Poem-making Sessions with Geoffrey Nutter.
Anique Sara Taylor 