Groundspeed
Emilia Phillips
9781629220369
64 pages
University of Akron Press
Overview
Groundspeed moves and doesn’t stop moving. From pastorals on American highways to self-reckonings after a cancer diagnosis to examinations on grief and transience after the death of a brother, this collection of poems asks readers not only to size up threats but anxieties. Phillips witnesses a small plane crash and examines roadside attractions. She reckons with sexuality after a partner asks for a threesome, and renders a candid portrait of a nude, post-surgery body in a mirror. In this raw and personal book, Phillips insists upon one’s own preservation through and beyond grief and trauma with the warning “creation is only // myth; destruction narrative.”
Author Bio
Emilia Phillips is the author of the two poetry collections, Signaletics (2013) and Groundspeed (March 2016) from the University of Akron Press, and three chapbooks including Beneath the Ice Fish Like Souls Look Alike (Bull City Press, 2015). Her poetry appears in Agni, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships to Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, The Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, U.S. Poets in Mexico, and Vermont Studio Center; the 2013–2014 Emerging Writer Lectureship at Gettysburg College; and the 2012 Poetry Prize from The Journal. She’s the Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Centenary College in Hackettstown, NJ.
