Consider the Rooster (Paperback or Softback)

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST POETRY COLLECTIONS OF 2024 BY LIT HUB AND ELECTRIC LITERATURE

FINALIST FOR THE 2024 NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD IN POETRY

FINALIST FOR THE 2025 CLMP FIRECRACKER AWARD IN POETRY

FINALIST FOR THE LAMBDA AWARD FOR TRANSGENDER POETRY

Consider the Rooster serves as an ode to a rooster’s crow, a catalyst for awakening, both literally and figuratively.

Amidst the Covid-19 Pandemic, the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder by police, and the resulting upsurge in reactionary right-wing militia violence, a neighbor in Kalamazoo, Michigan threatens to call the police after discovering the author’s pet rooster. The rooster sounds the alarm and our author wakes to revolutionary transformation. An ecological consciousness embedded in these verses invites readers to acknowledge their place in a web of relations. Oliver Baez Bendorf’s voice resounds through liminal spaces, at dusk and dawn, across personal meditations and wider cultural awakenings to form a collection overflowing with freedom, rebellion, mischief, and song.

Oliver Baez Bendorf is the author of Advantages of Being Evergreen (2019) and The Spectral Wilderness (2015). He has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Publishing Triangle, CantoMundo, Vermont Studio Center, and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. Born and raised in Iowa, he now lives in Colorado.