TRISTA EDWARDS

Trista Edwards’ Spectral Evidence is haunting. Magic happens everywhere, in the mundanity of everyday life and in the space between silence and stillness. “The shadow of witch casts a spell” is a line early on in the collection that exemplifies and sets the tone for the collection. The poems feast on a variety of topics, from motherhood to rabbits to museums to Bach to cemeteries. Edwards is a masterful storyteller of a haunted landscape, with the poems focusing on the unknown around us as we try to survive the bleakness of life, and ourselves, and show us that we often wake from dreams and nightmares not just from sleep, but in these moments every day. I wake up wanting more.
—Joanna C. Valente, author of Marys of the Sea and editor
of A Shadow Map

If Spectral Evidence is a season, it’s Fall. These poems are a harvest. Trista Edwards’ debut collection is an intimate portrait of becoming and empowerment. Whether it’s saints, Salem, or shrikes, the speaker admits that they know “the emptiness of a mouth searching for salvation.” Yet, there is no emptiness here. This collection breaks open the natural world and out comes magic “scorching our hands.” These poems burn and burn.
—Jenny Sadre-Orafai, author of Book of Levitations, Malak, and Paper, Cotton, Leather

In Trista Edwards’ enchanting collection, the reader becomes a ghost of sorts, hovering in that liminal space where poetry and the macabre meet. This poetry is a blueprint toward another realm, where bats swoop and soft hands shuffle e tarot cards by moonlight. But where we are fed mood and beauty, we are also shown the magic of lineation and craft. Edwards’ ability to pull us into the darkness is anchored by her wise way with words. In this book, “We are left to make sense of shadows.” A beautiful collection worth reading in the eve’s golden light of autumn or during silent, bone-chilling winter mornings.
—Lisa Marie Basile, author of The Magical Writing Grimoire, Light Magic for Dark Times, Nympholepsy, and Apocryphal

Buy Spectral Evidence from April Gloaming Publishing HERE.

Till the Tide: An Anthology of Mermaid Poetry seeks to investigate the archetypal mermaid and her many variations through contemporary voices. . In poetry, the mermaid as symbol and muse for verse extends to Dickinson, Yeats, Hughes, Eliot, Keats, Homer, Neruda, Rich, Atwood, Shakespeare, and Milton, just to name a few. Of course, mermaid has become an amalgamation, the flagship word, for siren, water nymph, sea witch, seductress, femme fatale, and enchantress. 

The poets featured here all engage with the mermaid and her many symbolic complexities: her femininity, sensuality, mystery, villainy, and voice. It is the last detail, voice, which is perhaps the most defining element. It is, after all, the mermaid’s mesmerizing voice that leads you to either ruin or transformation. Once you hear her, your life will forever be changed. 

The poems in this anthology will encounter the mermaid in a less traditional sense, often placing her in modern and unexpected settings: leading swim lessons at the Aquatic Arts Academy, managing a pizza shop before landing a gig at Weeki Wachee or lounging around her timeshare. These settings adding to the many ways these poets question, how does the mermaid subsist today?

Contributors include poets such as Ravi Shankar, Matthea Harvey, Caitlin Thomson, Rebecca Hazelton, Dante Di Stefano, Traci Brimhall, Martin Ott, and many others.

Buy from Sundress Publications HERE