Posts by: Valerie Duff

Consider the Octopus: On Brenda Shaughnessy

Jun, 2019 | by

What better symbol for the middle aged woman—for the middle aged woman writer?

Torn in the sky: on Ilya Kaminsky and Shane McCrae

Dec, 2018 | by

In Deaf Republic, Ilya Kaminsky connects our current era to a place and time that feels Soviet, although familiar. The book is a narrative with dramatis personae—townspeople, an unborn child,…

Mapping Kei Miller’s Zion

Jan, 2015 | by

photo by Georgia Popplewell The British Isles are finally taking notice of the young Jamaican poet Kei Miller, whose third book of poems, The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way…