Earthwhere

Earthwhere was written under the sign of disaster-a house fire, a global pandemic, the health crisis of a spouse, the stillbirth of my niece. In many of the poems, I address a ＂you,＂ a regular feature of lyric poetry, partly because it powerfully conjures a singular other, the ＂to whom＂ of address, our most precious loved ones. It made writing the poems feel like receiving the gift of their attention, like they were with me. Also, it made the act of writing an act of preservation, for poems enact and elicit emotion, connection. They’re all love letters, really.

Lindsay Illich is the author of Fingerspell (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), Rile & Heave (Texas Review Press, 2017), and the chapbook Heteroglossia (Anchor & Plume, 2016). Rile & Heave won the Texas Review Press Breakthrough Prize in Poetry. She also co-authored Teach Living Poets (National Council of Teachers of English, 2021). She teaches at Curry College in Milton, Massachusetts.