night myths before the body

"Abi Pollokoff's night myths • • before the body is a stunning debut, navigating womanhood, mythology, the body, and the surreal knowledge that dwells within. These poems linger with sensorial intimacy, stretching 'spandex language,' with wildly inventive language and sonic curiosity…. Pollokoff’s writing is a generous awakening, with poems encased in oozing amber, revealing multitudes of selfhood to be discovered."
-Jane Wong, author of Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City, How to Not Be Afraid of Everything (longlisted for the 2022 Pen/Voelcker Award in Poetry), and Overpour

"In Abi Pollokoff’s debut collection, we experience a storm of language. But what a carefully calibrated storm it is: one where lineation and the cadence of semantically driven breath create an atmospheric meaning that holds the reader with the same trembling electricity as pre-lightning static. … In this propulsive work, the tension between sound and syntax sings like rain on dry earth. As Pollokoff writes, 'watch the body.' I can’t take my eyes away."”
—Keetje Kuipers, author of All Its Charms, The Keys to the Jail, and Beautiful in the Mouth

"This powerful debut volume sings the body and the communities it makes possible with the human and nonhuman alike. Let us listen. Let us participate in this riveting communion."”
—Karla Kelsey, author of On Certainty