Poets and Poems: Ellen Kombiyil and "Love as an Invasive Species"

Love as an Invasive Species: Poems by Ellen Kombiyil packs a powerful punch. Collectively, the 40 poems are a story about women, working-class women who often find life stacked against them but keep fighting for themselves and their families.  

The collection is evenly divided into two “sides,” Side A and Side B, a reminder of an old 45 rpm record. The book is designed as a double book, so you read Side A, flip the book to the back cover, turn it upside down, and read Side B. The poems on each side correspond to each other in the order they’re in. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

The Best of Haiku 2024: Winners of the 2024 SCP Haiku Competition – Society of Classical Poets. 

 

Michaelmas: A Sonnet for St. Michael the Archangel – Malcolm Guite.

 

“Before the Ice is in the Pools,” poem by Emily Dickinson – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Spirals and Seasons: An Interview with Katharine Whitcomb – Tweetspeak Poetry. 

Hannah Arendt, Poet - Srikanth Reddy at The Paris Review.

Poetic Voices: Joan Murray and Ellen Kombiyil

When I think of poets who tell stories, I think of Chaucer, Milton, Dante, Tennyson and Longfellow. Storytelling isn’t something I usually associated with contemporary poetry. Two recent collections by poets Joan Murray and Ellen Kombiyil, however, both utilize storytelling, although they do it in entirely different ways.

Murray has been publishing poetry for the last 25 years, and this year has an expanded volume, Swimming for the Ark: New and Selected Poems. In addition to new poetry, she draws upon poems from four volumes published between 1990 and 2015.

Her poems tell stories. In fact, given the poems included in this new volume, Murray has been a storytelling poet from the beginning.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.