Distributary: Poems Volume 38

Distributary picks up where the speaker from Quiver left off and delves deeper in that speaker’s concerns and fears around fatherhood, cultural violence and his daughter’s illness. It is a book of sirens and ghosts, of time collapse. How many moments tangle and spark in the waking moments of our lives. It houses a grainy melancholia, paradigms of grief. Houses hope.

LUKE JOHNSON’s first book Quiver (TRP, 2023) was named a finalist for the California Book Award and finished finalist for prizes such as the Jake Adam York, The Levis and the Vassar Miller Award. Johnson is the co-author of A Slow Indwelling, a call and response project with the poet Megan Merchant (Harbor Editions). You can read more of his work at Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Narrative, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere.