Notes from the Passenger

Sonically vivid, as empire and climate fall into catastrophe, these poems open portals where the living and the dead find one another in new communication.

From Shelley Memorial Award Winner Gillian Conoley, Notes from the Passenger reminds us how with increased gun violence, war, plague, white supremacy, we are no longer “in control.” We are no longer drivers; we are passengers––destination unknown. Arriving like missives from a bardic journey, these poems explore how system collapse has led to a new space-time continuum. As our perception/projection of world shifts in the quotidian contemporary and historical—even ancient—time, these cinematic linguistically vibrant poems seek new order beyond division, within catastrophe and joy, written on the edge of being.

Gillian Conoley is a poet, editor, and translator. A long-time resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, Conoley is currently Professor of English and Poet-in-Residence at Sonoma State University where she edits VOLT.