Where Space Bends at Amazon.com
FinishingLinePress.com/Where-Space-Bends-by-Anique-Sara-Taylor
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, Author of The Volcano and After: Selected and New Poems 2002-2019
Former Chancellor of Academy of American Poets
Former New York State Poet Laureate
“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, Author of Caw, Dean of Discipline, and Celestial Joyride
Sinnerman (Etruscan Press)
Border Lines: Poems of Migration (Knopf)
https://www.michael-waters.com/
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, Author of The Black Maria and Kingdom Animalia
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Anique Sara Taylor’s chapbook Civil Twilight is Winner of the 2022 Blue Light Poetry Prize. Her full-length poetry book Where Space Bends was published in May 2020 by Finishing Line Press. Despite issues with long term chronic illness, Taylor is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her work has appeared in Rattle, Common Ground Review, Adanna, St. Mark’s Poetry Project’s The World, Stillwater Review, Earth’s Daughters, Cover Magazine. The National Poetry Magazine of the Lower East Side among others. Her chapbook Poems is published by Unimproved Editions Press.
Finalists 2023!
When Black Opalescent Birds Still Circled the Globe was chosen Finalist by Harbor Review’s Inaugural 2023 Jewish Women’s Prize. Feathered Strips of Prayer Before Morning was chosen Finalist by Minerva Rising Chapbook Competition 2023. Cobblestone Mist was Longlisted Finalist for the 2023 Small Harbor Editions’ Marginalia Series. The Strangeness of April is in July 2023 Red Noise Collective Anthology: Tide
Her work has appeared in several anthologies: The Lake Rises, poems to & for our bodies of water (Stockport Flats Press), Pain and Memory, Reflections on the Strength of the Human Spirit in Suffering (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 the Charter Oak Award for Best Historical Poem. Where Space Bends in earlier chapbook forms was chosen Finalist in 2014 by both Minerva Rising and Blue Light Press’ Chapbook Competitions. Under the Ice Moon was chosen Finalist in Blue Light Press’ 2015 Chapbook Competition.
She 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 and Painting BFA (With Highest Honors / Pratt Institute) and a Master of Divinity Degree. She studied literature at Antioch College, Poetry at St. Mark’s Poetry Project with Alice Notley, then Bernadette Mayer, and has been a regular at Wallson Glass Poem-Making Sessions with Geoffrey Nutter.
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.
FinishingLinePress.com/Where-Space-Bends-by-Anique-Sara-Taylor