Join Julie Poole at Alienated Majesty (Austin, TX) for the launch of her second poetry collection, Gorgeous Freak. She will be joined by poets Taisia Kitaiskaia & Bo Hee Moon.
A book of poetry meant to conjure the future while nourishing the present, Julie Poole’s second collection is inspired by movement within the Texan cityscape.
Written from 2016-2017, Gorgeous Freak follows Poole’s decision to start keeping a poetry journal while commuting by foot around Austin. Her intent, folded carefully in these slender and jagged poems, is to call out to a future soulmate, pulling them back into her present: hot, humid Austin, Texas, in the first year of the Trump presidency, traversed by foot miles a day, watching the seasons change through surrounding urban flora and fauna.
Julie Poole is a poet, journalist, and filmmaker based in Austin. She received a B.A. from Columbia University and an M.F.A. from the New Writers Project at the University of Texas. She has received fellowship and grant support from the James A. Michener Center, the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, and the PEN Writers Fund. She has been a resident at the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, the Corsicana Artist and Writer Residency, and Yaddo. Her first book of poems, Bright Specimen, was inspired by the Billie L. Turner Plant Resources Center at UT.
Taisia Kitaiskaia was born in Russia and raised in America. She is the author of The Nightgown & Other Poems as well as Ask Baba Yaga: Otherworldly Advice for Everyday Troubles and its follow-up, Poetic Remedies for Troubled Times from Ask Baba Yaga, and Literary Witches: A Celebration of Magical Women Writers, a collaboration with artist Katy Horan and an NPR Best Book of 2017. She has received fellowships from Yaddo and the James A. Michener Center for Writers. She lives in Austin, Texas.
Bo Hee Moon is a South Korean adoptee. Born in South Korea, she was adopted at three-months-old. Her poems have appeared in Cha, CutBank, diode, Radar, Redivider, The Offing, Zone 3, and others. Omma, Sea of Joy and Other Astrological Signs, published by Tinderbox Editions, is her debut collection of poems. She previously published under a different name.