Nicole Callihan

winner of the tenth gate prize: available from the word works

From series judge Sandra Lim (The Curious Thing), “The poems in chigger ridge sound out the rich ambivalence in the poet’s senses of what makes up a self and its endless enmeshments with the material world. There are country matters here, pastoral concerns woven into impressions of place, family, and the dramas of love and becoming.”

Nicole Cooley (Mother Water Ash) calls the book an “investigation of the ‘dark places’ of both body and landscape. A close look at Southern girlhood and a landscape of mountains, mined, stripped, empty. An investigation of bodies and violence…a brilliant excavation of landscape, language, and escape.”

“The poems in Nicole Callihan’s exhilarating chigger ridge move in revved-up staccato bursts, each one straining against its brevity with the energy of a wasp battering a jam jar’s glass. These poems push against the conventions of language, commingling the colloquial with scraps from the literary canon and sifting obsessively through shards of memory as they grapple toward a truth ‘as plain and massive as the sky.’” —Matt Donovan, The Dug-Up Gun Museum                                   

this strange garment

“If I made a list of my fears, it would begin this way,” writes Nicole Callihan in This Strange Garment—and indeed, this collection faces down a barrage of threats. The pandemic seeps under doors as cancer faces off with radiation; physical and emotional pain are ubiquitous. Enduring surgery and treatment for breast cancer while caring for children, the speaker explores mortality and attempts to understand what is happening to her. Nevertheless, her terror does not preclude moments of ravenous hope: “I write the same word over and over, and mostly that word is light.” While she reflects on reconstructive surgeries, Callihan says, “If you say belly button over and over, it’ll start to sound like something else. Like saying hydrangea until it becomes a bomb.” Callihan’s poetry captures that very power of defamiliarization, creating poetic space where flower meets explosion and light meets cancer. “I am not the same woman who began this story,” she writes, and I am not the same woman after reading This Strange Garment.  

—Jessica L. Walsh, Book of Gods & Grudges

Reviews & Interviews: Publisher’s Weekly, Indianapolis Review, EcoTheo Collective, The Rumpus, Harvard Review, Harbor Review, Heavy Feather, Counterclock, MER, BOMB, Lily Poetry Review, and The Critical Flame.

elsewhere

Winner of the 2019 Sixth Finch Prize, ELSEWHERE, is the second collaboration of Nicole Callihan and Zoë Ryder White.

Longtime friends and collaborators, Nicole & Zoë’s latest collection examines desire, motherhood, and what it means to be in a body. “I don’t know how I reckon,” the book ends, “but I do.” And the book is that very reckoning, the reaching out to be heard, the navigation through snow-driven streets, PTA pie drives, and middle life wanderings. An intimate portrayal of female friendship, ELSEWHERE, makes it feel like you’re peeking into the heart and brain of the lady next door.

the couples

Mason Jar Press is proud to introduce the Novella Series with the release of three stellar chapbooks by Nicole Callihan, Jaime Fountaine, and Tomas Moniz. These thematically linked pieces speak to one another while containing a strength and style all their own.

Tomas Moniz’s All Friends Are Necessary follows a young man in San Francisco as he navigates love, addiction, and the struggles of adulthood on his way to maturity and independence.

In Jaime Fountaine’s Manhunt, an unnamed narrator experiences a summer on the cusp of womanhood, exploring her own sexuality, the deep cuts of her teenage years, and the extreme ennui of suburban decay.

The Couples, by Nicole Callihan, finds a woman at a crossroads in her marriage and her family life, remembering and re-experiencing her first relationship and all the damage her youth imparted upon her.

Watch the trailer here; read an excerpt here, and an interview here.

translucence

في ديوان “بين قارّتين” للشاعرة سمر عبد الجابر، جرأة فتح السؤال على البدايات. ثمة فلسفة تخترق المعاني فتتبدّى بدايةً.. أظلال الدلالات والإيقاع؟.. “متى بدأ الحزن؟”.. مناخات عميقة وخصوصية شعرية تنهمر بسلاسة.. أإيقاع الغياب؟! “كيف كانت الأرض حين هطل المطر للمرّة الأولى؟”.. تقف القصيدة، في معمارها الشعريّ-التأمليّ، على مفترق لحظة العدالة.. على مفترق الغيابْ حيث فلسطين تنتظر. “كان عليك أن تحدّق جيّداً في عينيّ الغزال الواسعتين قبل أن تطلق النار.. نظرةً حزينةً إلى الأبد”.. حكايات تنهمر من الماضي والآتي.. في البدء كان الشعر.

هالا محمّد—

How do languages speak to each other? Through poetry, of course, and Translucence illuminates such a correspondence, an exchange, a dance. Abdel Jaber and Callihan’s parallel scripts and lyrics shine beautifully side by side, over and under, voicing loss, longing, and love. These poems address and redress “what it might mean/to disappear/into the self/into the sea."

—Joseph O. Legaspi

Co-written with Palestinian poet, Samar Abdel Jaber, Translucence reckons with what it means to translate across bodies, culture, and time. The poems which appear to be translations of each other, but are not, explore the ways in which we utter ourselves and our experiences.

SuperLoop

Borrowing her title from the old carnival ride that loops its riders round and round, Nicole Callihan’s SuperLoop is as familiar and as thrilling as another go on a long loved ride. Paired with artwork from fellow Brooklyn-ite Re Jin, Callihan’s poems—sometimes wild, sometimes quiet, always unassuming—take us to a place we’ve been before, but through her eyes that dusty place becomes a bit more magical. Here, the waitress always brings extra whipped cream; divorced parents fall into each other’s arms; orchids grow; and, in spite of themselves and the world around them, people find love and walk, albeit reluctantly, into the sunset. Fierce, funny, at times, downright sweet—for Callihan, just making it is a miracle, and it’s a miracle she’s not afraid to name.

Praise for Superloop:
“Precise, graceful, and generous, the poems in Super Loop, seem to be born out of a deep, careful attention
and a profound compassion. Sometimes the quiet observer, sometimes the kid in the center of the messed-up
carnival, these poems are the fireflies you've missed all winter, the longed-for return of the bees. Unaffected
and inherently hopeful, Callihan's work is as merciful as it is moving.”--Ada Limón

“These poems dig deep into the ragged nature of what it means to be alive, unveiling in bristling clarity, the
cracks, quirks, “thorny edges,” and great beauty of being. A master in the language of blush and bruise, Nicole
Callihan tells stories that rub the mind like a fever in a cool wind.” --Dawn Lundy Martin

“So unpretentious and alive and interesting.”--Jean Valentine

Read a review: here.

Henry River Mill Village

In 1904, the building of a planned community began, and the Henry River Manufacturing Company started producing fine cotton yarns in 1905. In its time, Henry River Mill Village was a completely self-sustained town: it operated under its own currency, generated its own electricity and churned its own moonshine. While the mill thrived during its operating years, the twelve-hour shifts often proved back-breaking for workers. By the time the 12,000 spindles slowed to a halt in the early 1970s, many workers had hoboed out of town looking for higher wages. The mill itself burned down in 1977, but the two-story company store and many of the worker’s houses remain, creating an eerie silhouette—and serving as inspiration to both artists and filmmakers—in Burke County.

Writer Nicole Callihan, whose grandmother grew up “on the hill,” combines forces with longtime Henry River resident Ruby Young Keller to create this compelling account of a mill village turned ghost town turned Hollywood movie set. Having gathered stories and photographs from former residents and their families, Henry River Mill Village emerges as not simply a rich account of North Carolina textile industry but as a true testament to a community that flourished even in hardship.

braving the body, edited with Pichchenda Bao & Jennifer Franklin

Braving the Body, an astonishing new anthology edited by Nicole Callihan, Pichchenda Bao, and Jennifer Franklin, reminds us that to brave the body one must survive it.  Or transgress it. Or claim it radically. “Give me a live girl, a mess,” begs KC Trommer, “one with a mouth for talking,” and we’re reminded of all that constructs the body, making it more than simply flesh and bone and organs. Braving the Body reimagines the body as “factory,” as grateful objectness, as aspirational and asking, “How did Jesus keep / his girlish figure?” After these 116 poems—at times achingly visceral, at others necessarily light-filled—you’ll wonder how you ever thought a body was a thing you knew. 

—Dawn Lundy Martin, author of Good Stock Strange Blood

I refuse to believe the poems in Braving the Body haven’t been gathering together for years, tuning up and practicing in some secret lair: that’s how perfectly their voices combine, creating a layered composition that examines the human body in all of its riches, losses, temptations, and possibilities. Looking for jaw-drop images and wry formal turns? You’ll find them. Want to laugh, shiver, or nod in recognition? You will. But this anthology’s power resides not just in the individual poet, but the collective call to action that we must speak, more openly, about these experiences within our perfectly imperfect, obscenely blessed, blessedly obscene, and endangered selves. Harmony is great, but so is raising a ruckus. This book does both.  

—Sandra Beasley, author of Made to Explode

Read the review: RHINO.

four american poets

Four American Poets is a collection of incandescent poems about the experience of living in, and trying to understand, America. In streetwise ballads and searching monologues, Philip Fried, Nicole Callihan, Jay Passer and Michalle Gould reinvent form and stretch the boundaries of poetic language in their quest for truth and integrity in a dangerous and fragmented world.

from medusa to the sky

THE EXERCISES IN FROM MEDUSA TO THE SKY grew out of Teachers & Writers Collaborative’s long history of providing creative writing programs for students in New York City’s District 75 schools and classrooms, which serve students with special learning needs. 

First published in 2001, Medusa has proved to be a favorite resource for teaching artists—writers working in K–12 schools—as well as classroom teachers. Although the exercises were developed by Teachers & Writers Collaborative teaching artists who taught special needs students, the ideas in this book have been used as a starting point for lesson plans to engage a variety of young learners in imaginative writing.