Reading: Brittney Corrigan: Solastalgia

Annie Bloom's welcomes back Portland poet Brittney Corrigan for an in-store reading from her new collection, Solastalgia. Brittney will be joined by fellow Portland poet Kristin Berger, whose latest collection is Earthwork.

Signed and personalized copies of Solastalgia are available for order! Please, please, please include the name for personalization in the order notes; all orders without a name specified in the order notes will be signed only.

About Solastalgia:

Recalling Joni Mitchell's famous lyric "They paved paradise, put up a parking lot," Solastalgia is a heart-wrenching and harrowing overview of environmental destruction. Though it is an ominous exploration of the Anthropocene era and the ways humans have contributed to the changing climate and landscape, it spends much of its time honoring all the strange and wondrous creatures-"may you outlast us"- that humans, both intentionally and unwittingly, are shoving toward extinction's cliff. Solastalgia is an eloquent tribute to all the awe-inspiring flora and fauna that we have failed as a species. I love this book not only for its incisive eco-eye but also for its dazzling language terrains. Using language as the tool to effect change, these poems make you want to be better, do better.

Brittney Corrigan is the author of the poetry collections Breaking, Navigation, 40 Weeks, and most recently, Daughters, a series of persona poems in the voices of daughters of various characters from folklore, mythology, and popular culture. Brittney was raised in Colorado and has lived in Portland, Oregon for the past three decades, where she is an alumna and employee of Reed College. She is currently at work on her first short story collection.

About Earthwork:

The poetry of Earthwork is centered around, sprung from, and located in the landscape of mothering during the increasingly mapless territory of climate change and the pandemic. These are poems that take careful care of the small wonders of childhood and parenthood against such large and looming realities; poems that never stray away from wide-eyed honesty, taking in grief, joy, memory, and the strangeness of life, equally. Poems that stay put on the earth, show us with their small mappings a few ways of doing the necessary work.

Kristin Berger is the author of the poetry collections Refugia (Persian Pony Press, 2019), Echolocation (Cirque Press, 2018), How Light Reaches Us (Aldrich Press, 2016), and For the Willing (Finishing Line Press, 2008), and a collaborative poetry and print book, Woman & Changing Man: A High Desert Myth (Nightjar Press, 2022), with Eugene, Oregon printmaker Diane Sandall. Recipient of residencies from Playa, OSU's Spring Creek Project (Shotpouch and H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest), and Starkey Experimental Forest and Range, Kristin’s work is influenced by Oregon's High Desert, Cascades, Coastal Range and all the Pacific Northwest's wild and interconnected landscapes. Kristin lives in Portland, Oregon, with her family.