This week, meet one of the most amazing writers and literary citizens in our community, Allison Joseph! Allison lives, writes, and teaches in Carbondale, Illinois, where she is part of the creative writing faculty at Southern Illinois University. She serves as editor and poetry editor of Crab Orchard Review, moderator of the Creative Writers Opportunities List, and director of the Young Writers Workshop, a summer writers’ workshop for teen writers.
Her books and chapbooks include What Keeps Us Here (Ampersand Press), Soul Train (Carnegie Mellon University Press), In Every Seam(University of Pittsburgh Press), Worldly Pleasures (Word Tech Communications), Imitation of Life (Carnegie Mellon UP), Voice: Poems (Mayapple Press), My Father’s Kites (Steel Toe Books), Trace Particles (Backbone Press), Little Epiphanies (Imaginary Friend Press), Mercurial (Mayapple Press), Mortal Rewards (White Violet Press), Multitudes (forthcoming, Word Tech Communications), The Purpose of Hands (forthcoming, Glass Lyre Press), Corporal Muse(forthcoming, Lucky Bastard Press). Her next full-length collection,Confessions of a Barefaced Woman, has been accepted for publication by Red Hen Press. She is the literary partner and wife of Jon Tribble.
I go back again and again to Allison’s work, but especially My Father’s Kites.
Buy Allison’s Books!
My Father’s Kites
http://www.steeltoebooks.com/books/39-my-fathers-kites.html
Praise for My Father’s Kites
“‘Tell me about the poet,’ urges Allison Joseph in the very first line of her remarkable new collection — and it is with insight, honesty and extraordinary technical skill that she accomplishes exactly this. My Father’s Kites is a self-revelatory collection of carefully wrought, jewel-like poems that explore the often paradoxical complexities of family relationships. Her strategy is tightly linked to her remarkable expertise as a formalist — a gift that becomes most evident in ‘What the Eye Beholds,’ a series of sonnets about her father’s flamboyant life, his gradual ‘dereliction,’ his inevitable early death, and its poignant aftermath. The arc of this sequence, flanked as it is by graceful villanelles and rondeaus. I cannot think of another contemporary poet who has done a finer job of combining form and content, to dazzling effect.” — Marilyn Taylor
Soul Train
http://www.upne.com/0887482472.html
In Every Seam
https://www.upress.pitt.edu/BookDetails.aspx?bookId=34548
Wordly Pleasures
http://www.wordpoetrybooks.com/joseph.htm
Imitation of Life
http://www.amazon.com/Imitation-Life-Carnegie-Mellon-Poetry/dp/0887483860
Voice: Poems
http://mayapplepress.com/voice-poems-allison-joseph/
Trace Particles
http://backbonepress.org/chapbooks/
Mercurial
http://mayapplepress.com/mercurial-allison-joseph/
Mortal Rewards
Read More from Allison Online
20 Poems from Allison Joseph
http://www.culturalfront.org/2011/10/20-poems-by-allison-joseph.html
http://www.heartjournalonline.com/joseph/2013/12/1/two-poems-by-allison-joseph
http://atticusreview.org/september-featured-poet-allison-joseph/
https://sliverofstonemagazine.com/running-while-black-by-allison-joseph/
http://rlpoetry.org/extraction-allison-joseph/
http://www.bradley.edu/sites/poet/steel/poems/joseph.dot
Interviews
http://lunchticket.org/allison-joseph-poet/
http://www.thefourthriver.com/index.php/the-mark-of-real-life-an-interview-with-allison-joseph
http://www.midwestwriters.org/2014/06/interview-with-allison-joseph/
Hear Allison Read
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2TEGGSxUeA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BWP3KtEXpo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h5E1KynLY4
Happy reading!
xo
Mary
Mary Carroll-Hackett: Poetry and Prose 
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