To My Dreamcatcher by Elizabeth Robin

In Madness, Rack, and Honey, Mary Ruefle writes, “For me, the moon has always been the very embodiment of lyric poetry.” I see that lunar lyricism reflected by this poet. The language is mystical, mythic, sublime, and romantic. The haunting imagery is fresh and allows for strangeness, devastation, and delight in a way that captures me as a reader. There’s a cohesive arc in her poems, a notion that these pieces are in concert to one another. The syntax reminds me of the late and great, Lucille Clifton, with the use of the lowercase, the “i” woven throughout the work. In doing so, this poet is thinking about her relationship to the line and to the self in a meaningful way. These stunning poems all felt like “a rumbling love song” and left me lit up and wanting more.

–Tiana Clark, judging Elizabeth Robin the 2021 Carrie McCray Nickens Fellow for Poetry, Creative Writing faculty, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), Equilibrium (Bull City Press, 2016)

Elizabeth Robin’s To My Dreamcatcher is a wonderfully crafted collection of adventure, acceptance, loss, and rebirth that leaves her readers craving more with the turn of every page.

–Alexander Yucas, M.F.A. Converse College, Spartanburg SC, Tracks (Converse College Press, 2013)