After the frightening results of the 2016 election, Paula Cisewski adopted a new writing practice and coping mechanism. She would invite a friend over for tea and a tarot reading. Later she would share with them the first draft of a poem inspired by the cards, the conversation, and whatever of the world had leaked in. The practice made space for meaningful communication in an uncertain time.
Portable City is primarily a travelogue composed of introspections on movement through both the physical world and nonlinear timelines. Introducing the concrete and the abstract to one another, it is an endeavor of braided language, some edges sharp and others softened. In its meditations, the collection builds dialogue between image and narrative, between the tangible and the intangible, and between the world at large and its most attentive observers.
It Is As If Desire is a collection of occasional poems (poems written for specific occasions) that examine, deconstruct, disrupt, and celebrate love and friendship.
From loose pages to issue 119 of our magazine, an anthology of over 100 HLP poets, over a decade of the Loose Award for translated works, the Founders prize for first book in its third year, and a bunch of great books in the works, we couldn’t have come this far without you.
