This edition of the Book Trail kicks off with one of my most recent loves – Anne Michael’s Skin Divers – and takes us through a plethora of fantastic independent presses.
1. Skin Divers by Anne Michaels 
‘From the author of Fugitive Pieces, this work provides a collection of poems, meditations on how love changes in order to survive and how we move from obsolete science to new perceptions.‘
2. Excuse me while I wring this long swim out of my hair by S. Jane Sloat
I can find no blurb for this, but very much love the idea of what the independent press who publish this chapbook are doing: ‘The dancing girl press chapbook series was founded in 2004 to publish and promote the work of women poets and artists through chapbooks, journals, book arts projects, and anthologies. Spawned by the online zine wicked alice, dgp seeks to publish work that bridges the gaps between schools and poetic techniques–work that’s fresh, innovative, and exciting. The press has published over 90 titles by emerging women poets in delectable handmade editions. Our books are available via our website, at select independent bookstores, Chicago area literary events, and through author readings. Also a purveyor of paper, ephemera, and vintage-inspired arts and crafts, dancing girl press & studio occasionally hosts readings, discussions, and workshops related to poetics, publishing, DIY, and book arts.‘
3. Snow by Maxence Fermine
‘An international bestseller, “Snow “is “a novel that reads like a poem. Limpid, delicate, and pure like its title.”* In nineteenth-century Japan, a young haiku poet named Yuko journeys through snow-covered mountains on a quest for art and finds love instead. Maxence Fermine’s prose is hypnotic, and his sensuous love story envelops you as if you¹re wrapped in one of his dreams with your eyes wide open. Yuko has all the makings of greatness, but must learn to reach beyond the silent starkness of snow, his ultimate inspiration, to find the color pulsing through life. Color enhanced by love, without which he will remain invisible to the world. On his journey to enlightenment he learns how fragile the balance of life can be through the tragic story of his blind master, Soseki, and the love of his life, a French tightrope walker named Snow. Love and art finally converge in a most startling and exquisite way when a special young woman opens Yuko’s heart to the purest of color and light.’
4. The Weather Stations by Ryan Call
‘The debut collection of ten short stories from Ryan Call, including stories originally published in Keyhole, The Lifted Brow, Lo-Ball, The Collagist, The Los Angeles Review, Hobart and Web Conjunctions.‘
5. Howling at the Moon by Darshana Suresh 
‘Tell me, Atlas. What is heavier: the world or its people’s hearts? In her debut poetry collection, Darshana Suresh explores what it means to be alive, and how hurting and healing can often be overwhelmingly intertwined. She does not write about recovery. Instead, she writes about carrying on until you are ready to recover.‘
6. Letters from Medea by Salma Deera
‘A collection of poems that reincarnates one of the most wicked women in classical literature into the modern day. It is a collection that celebrates and understands girlhood, loss, and love. These are Medea’s letters to the modern girl.‘
7. Blue Hour by Carolyn Forche
‘“Blue Hour is an elusive book, because it is ever in pursuit of what the German poet Novalis called ‘the [lost] presence beyond appearance.’ The longest poem, ‘On Earth,’ is a transcription of mind passing from life into death, in the form of an abecedary, modeled on ancient gnostic hymns. Other poems in the book, especially ‘Nocturne’ and ‘Blue Hour,’ are lyric recoveries of the act of remembering, though the objects of memory seem to us vivid and irretrievable, the rage to summon and cling at once fierce and distracted.‘
8. Men In the Off Hours by Anne Carson
‘In Men in the Off Hours, Carson offers further proof of her tantalizing gifts. Reinventing figures as diverse as Oedipus, Emily Dickinson, and Audubon, Carson sets up startling juxtapositions: Lazarus among video paraphernalia, Virginia Woolf and Thucydides discussing war, Edward Hopper paintings illuminated by St. Augustine. And in a final prose poem, she meditates movingly on the recent death of her mother. With its quiet, acute spirituality and its fearless wit and sensuality, Men in the Off Hours shows us a fiercely individual poet at her best.‘
Purchase from The Book Depository
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