Code

Poetry. At its center, CODE features a narrative sequence with three characters: a new father, a mother dying young from an inherited disease, and that mother's own DNA. In light of exciting new developments such as CRISPR that would allow us to alter genetics and eradicate certain diseases, this book approaches ethical questions from an angle that science cannot. Ultimately, CODE is a book about grief--specifically, how to accept it. These poems attest to how we preserve what is lost, not only through story and poetry, but also through nonverbal means like cave art and DNA.

Charlotte Pence, Mobile's Inaugural Poet Laureate, is the author of Code (recipient of ASPS book of the year), Many Small Fires, (recipient of the Foreword Reviews silver medal Indie Poetry of the year) and The Branches, the Axes, the Missing (recipient of the Black River Chapbook Prize). She is also a MacDowell fellow, Sewanee Writers Conference fellow, and a Vanderbilt Patterson Fellow. A graduate of Emerson College (MFA) and the University of Tennessee (PhD), she is now the director of the Stokes Center for Creative Writing at University of South Alabama.