Poet Review of the Week: Jessica L. Walsh
April is National Poetry Month Series
As part of National Poetry Month, I bring you the fourth and final installment of “Poet of the Week.” Today, I’m pleased to introduce you to the brilliance of Jessica L. Walsh. She is another stunning poet with deep roots here in Michigan.
Jessica L. Walsh is the author of Book of Gods and Grudges (Glass Lyre, 2022) as well as two previous collections, The List of Last Tries, and How to Break My Neck. Her work has appeared on the Best American Poetry Blog and journals like RHINO, Indianapolis Review, Crab Creek Review, and many more. Her poetry has won multiple editorial prizes from journals and has been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, and Best of the Net. Since 2017 she has served as the blog manager at Agape Editions. Walsh received a BA from Kalamazoo College and a PhD from University of Iowa. Originally from small-town Michigan, she currently lives outside of Chicago and teaches at a community college.
My introduction to Jessica’s work came through a social media post sharing her poem “When my daughter tells me I was never punk.” I fell in love with her words instantly and sprinted to her website to order her poetry collection Book of Gods and Grudges.
Excerpts of some of the reviews for this viscerally stunning collection are listed below with links to the full online review.
“The Book of Gods & Grudges is written in four parts, with each section break marking a turn in the speaker’s lived experience. Walsh’s speaker, who is bold throughout—and self-aware—brings us into her history, her initial formation of self, her evolution and grief in middle age, and ultimately into an identity that incorporates all of this. . .. Ultimately the Book of Gods & Grudges asks and answers a single question: “How did I get here? I say, By my fucking teeth.”
Book of Gods & Grudges by Jessica L. Walsh - MER - Mom Egg Review
“In Book of Gods & Grudges, what Jessica L. Walsh brings to the long conversation of poetry is vital and irreplaceable. From the cover with that gorgeous axe at the center of lush greenery to the last poem’s defiant embrace of survival, the reader is listening to a voice committed to seeing clearly. The speaker in this book – and it does feel like there is a single, cohesive speaker across all the poems in the volume – is figuring out what she is surviving, why she wants to survive, the cost of survival, and ultimately reconciling with the fact of her own survival.”
Review of Book of Gods and Grudges by Jessica L. Walsh | Tinderbox Poetry Journal
“Reading Jessica L. Walsh’s stunning collection, Book of Gods and Grudges, is like having a deep fulfilling talk with a good friend about things we don’t always speak of – the ache of being human.” – Kelli Russell Agodon, author of Dialogues with Rising Tides
“Jessica Walsh's Book of Gods and Grudges tells a tale of generational trauma and transcendence. She declares early on that "My first kin were killers," people for whom "burnout was a luxury" they could not afford. Her speaker struggles through illness and sobriety and grappling with God as a problem she tries to solve as she finds her own calling. The poems are unflinchingly honest and impeccably crafted. They show us what it means to stay "flagrantly alive." Grace Bauer, author of
Unholy Heart: New and Selected Poems
More information about Jessica and where her books can be found at these links:
Her next collection of poetry, unnamed for now, is currently in the pipeline for publication.
Website: Jessica L Walsh – Poetry
IG: @JessicaWalshPoet
Threads: JessicaWalshPoet
Now, a word from our sponsor.
(That’s me. I’m my own sponsor.)
I hope you enjoyed my deep dive into poetry this month. Thank you for bearing with me through the daily poetry postings. My desire was to share some of my work with you in advance of putting together my own poetry collection later this year. But scheduling daily poetry posts also offered me the ability to step away from writing for most of the month without letting this publication languish while I attended to the urgent matter of my father’s health care.
I hope to be back to the semi-regular twice a week schedule soon.
Thank you for being one of my readers, I appreciate every single one of you very much!