COMING SEPTEMBER 2023, out of UGA Press, by Tennison S. Black
Winning Selection of the National Poetry Series
A three-part poetry collection that weaves a story about identity, family, and place.
Survival Strategies is a love story wrapped in a reckoning. Arranged in three parts, this collection of poems follows a narrative arc. The speaker, who is returning to the Sonoran of her birth after many years away, takes us with her on a journey of enlightenment.
Includes a foreword by Alberto Ríos.
Some of the advance praise:
“With grace and grit, Tennison Black creates a stunning portrait of the ethos of a male dominance (of nature, animals, and women) that haunts us all today. The prose fable that concludes this brilliant collection has the largesse of a vision. This book augurs a major new poet!”
—Cynthia Hogue, author of instead, it is dark
“I’ve not been to the Southwest in over a decade, but Tennison Black’s Survival Strategies teleports me into the beauty and brutality of that region and its history with impeccable ease. […] This is easily one of the best books of poetry I’ve read this year.”
—Kyle McCord, Author of Reunion of the Good Weather Suicide Cult
“With each poem, experience—whether tender or catastrophic—is birthed into new competence and clarity. There is a profound and literal refreshment in this book, one urgently needed now.”
—Donald Revell, author of White Campion
“Alive with hard-earned understanding and affirmation, these poems are for everyone who ever tried to leave a formative place of pain but found that person and place could never be fully untwined.”
—Adrienne Su, author of Peach State
More thoughts from these authors and further details about this collection can be found here.
Read about Tennison’s win and more about this project in a feature from the Yuma Sun.