About Amber West
Amber West is also the author of the chapbook Daughter Eraser and numerous plays and “puppet poems” which have been performed on the east and west coasts. Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies such as Calyx, Rhizomes, Puppetry International, Furies: A Poetry Anthology of Women Warriors, and The Routledge Companion to Puppetry & Material Performance. West is director of the NYC artist collective, Alphabet Arts, and teaches writing at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Praise for Hen & God
Characters farfetched and familiar populate these poems: they live by their wits and play at the edge of wit’s end. From the “crackle and breath” of voices, Amber West calls back and sings forth—making lifelines to cross the precipice.
— Phillis Levin, author of Mr. Memory & Other Poems
The many voices in Hen & God sound out the broken-down reality that is these United States of America. West traces histories of America’s misery across coasts and cultures towards a resistant present and future joy.
—Modesto Jimenez, author of Oye, Para Mi Querido Brooklyn (Listen, for My Dear Brooklyn)
Amber West offers so many pleasures here: wise-ass speeches by the gods, feminist animal fables, pirate sonnets, and blues songs for the gorgeously gone-wrong. This poet hears Las Vegas speaking with the voice of a gangster-drunk craving water; she hears the sounds little boys don’t make when their moms’ boyfriends lock them out of the house; she’s captured the theatrical rage of Black Friday crowds that can crush a man. Whip-smart, angry, and tender by turns, West’s poems aren’t afraid to call on some of the oldest traditions in English verse to electrify the dramas of 21st century urban life.
—V. Penelope Pelizzon, author of Nostos
Reviews
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