Never a Name Given by Christine Moore

Name: Never a Name Given by Christine Moore
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Debut

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This title will be released on November 13, 2026

What does it mean to be fully alive in a world that is always, simultaneously, burning and blooming? Christine Moore‘s debut collection, Never a Name Given, answers this question in forty luminous poems that move between the cosmic and the domestic, the ancient and the immediate, with rare and unselfconscious grace. This lushly rendered collection dissolves the boundaries between the intimate and the infinite — where laundry tumbles with stardust, where grief opens into mystery, and where the moon is both witness and guide. Moore moves with rare fluency between the textures of daily life and the vast systems of the cosmos, weaving family, friendship, loss, and joy into something that feels at once deeply personal and eternally familiar.

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Christine Moore grew up in rural Northern California surrounded by nature, where she learned the joy and fragility of life. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of San Francisco. Her work has appeared in journals such as Erbacce; The Pasadena Review; 26: A Journal of Poetry and Poetics; Ink, Sweat & Tears; Pinhole Poetry; and The Inflectionist Review. Her chapbook, Lent Words, was published in 2024. Never A Name Given is her debut collection. She is a journalist and Poet-Teacher through California Poets in the Schools.

PRAISE:

Christine Moore’s Never a Name Given brings the reader into “a home within something so much larger than home”. Quotidian life and the systems of the universe loosen their boundaries, allowing “the very matter that formed spherical stars …[to be] churning away in my tumble dryer”. Just as “the morning is not one thing”, this volume is never just one, as family, friendships, losses, and joys are seamlessly interwoven with the wonders of the natural world and the greater cosmos beyond us. We open this book to the devastation of fire, where “the world is aflame and we are luminous loss in the lost”, but finish it convinced that “The act of rebuilding pulls the moon towards us”. This is a lushly written collection where “Tongues lunge toward language” and ask that we in turn “listen unceasingly”.

–Susanne Dyckman is the author of the poetry collections equilibrium’s form (Shearsman Books) and A Dark Ordinary (Furniture Press Books), as well as five chapbooks. With Elizabeth Robinson, she is co-author of Rendered Paradise (Apogee Press).

Christine Moore is a poet at home in the body of this world. Readers will skinnydip in this collection of poetry. The joyful immersion into her poems that embrace bodies of water, creatures, and land where a “lunar glow is a reliable guide.” In this reflective moonlight we see both fullness and loss anew, hearing suggestions of resurrection in the unspeakable. There is an urgency in Never a Name Given that enlivens the felt separation with grief, a necessary portal serving a mysterious unity. Feel these poems on your skin as waves crossing time and eternity, lapping against you on the shores of the present moment.

–Paul Swanson is Director of Curriculum at the Center for Action and Contemplation and host of the Contemplify podcast.

Reading these poems from Never a Name Given by Christine Moore, I am reminded of a statement by writer Ocean Vuong: “The future is in our mouths.” In this moment of profound global uncertainty, volatility, and degradation at every level, Moore’s poems are faithful companions, reminding us of the abundance of beauty, both quiet and exuberant, that surrounds us. They show us that each day we have the opportunity to renew the world with our words: “The opposite of indifference/is deciding that I will/dream while/ceaselessly listening/for your beat.” She declares that “loss is our mother tongue,” but also shows us that the languages of gratitude, faith, and wonder possess an equal transformative power: “To imagine what/ imagination would be if there were never a name given to anything.” I want to live in Moore’s world, where “the limestone night’s constellations are delicate, ochre stains…” and where “our dead speak in amber embrocation.” Read these poems; they will heal you: “Let the acoustic borders/of this single tree fill/you //as if hearing//I love you//spoken/in every language/you don’t know.”

–Tiff Dressen is the author of Of Mineral (Nightboat Books) and Songs from the Astral Bestiary (lyric& Press).

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