Synopsis
What We Hold On To is a curated poetry anthology exploring how people cope, connect, and carry on through moments of personal and collective uncertainty. Featuring voices from across regions and backgrounds, the poems gathered here reflect on grief, resilience, family, love, and the small, sustaining acts that help us move forward.
Edited by Nick Allison and Rachel Armes-McLaughlin and published by The Chaos Section Poetry Project and TCS Press, this collection brings together established and emerging poets in conversation, offering a record of care, attention, and shared humanity.
About the Authors
The Chaos Section Poetry Project is an independent poetry press and editorial project based in Austin, Texas. It grew out of The Chaos Section, a long-running opinion site founded in 2012, and was created as a way to expand that work into poetry-bringing the same attention to lived experience, civic life, and cultural pressure into a different form.Rather than publishing individual poems on a rolling basis, the project focuses on curated collections. Each chapbook is built around a central theme and shaped through editorial collaboration, with an emphasis on clarity, craft, and emotional honesty.Our first collection, Record of Dissent: Poems of Protest in an Authoritarian Age (TCS Press 2025), gathered voices responding to political pressure, resistance, and the erosion of democratic norms. Our second collection, What We Hold On To: Poems of Coping, Connection, and Carrying On (TCS Press, 2026), turns inward, exploring how people endure, adapt, and remain connected in uncertain times.All chapbooks are released free to read on the site (thechaossectionpoetryproject.com), with free high-quality digital downloads available. Print editions are offered for readers who want a physical copy.We welcome a wide range of poetic approaches-free verse, formal, experimental, personal, political... what matters most is care for language, attention to form, and, most importantly, a willingness to engage honestly with the world as it is.
Rachel Armes-McLaughlin has written poetry for nearly 25 years. Her work is published in The Chaos Section Poetry Project, where she currently assists as co-editor; in venues such as Loblolly Press, Middle Mouse Press, and Medicine and Meaning; in a Central ArkansasLibrary System anthology; and elsewhere, with one poem nominated for Best of the Net and another nominated for a 2025 Pushcart Prize. Rachel lives in the very red state of Arkansas with her husband, Jack; daughter, Isabelle; and four cats. You can find her on BlueSky at @mother-poet.bsky.social.
Nick Allison is a writer and editor based in Austin, Texas. His work has appeared in HuffPost, CounterPunch, The Fulcrum, The Chaos Section, and elsewhere. (@nickallison80.bsky.social)
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