Emilia Phillips’s most recent chapbook, Hemlock (Diode Editions), does something that many books of poetry aim for, though few achieve—it serves as a document of a closely observed and deeply felt life.
Read more of the review by Luiza Flynn-Goodlett at Adroit Journal
Hemlock, a chapbook chronicling a lonely summer lost to the brain’s raucous shouting, swings wildly between anxiety and joy, juggling questions and proclamations alike about god, the body, and gender-unrestrictive desire. Self-aggrandizing and self-deprecating all at once, the speaker here declares that “Yes, I belong to my excesses” but that the “body is // a mixed metaphor,” one that expands and contracts with one’s mental state, connecting to the world and retreating from it.
Emilia Phillips is the author of three poetry collections from the University of Akron Press, most recently Empty Clip (2018), and four chapbooks, including Hemlock (Diode Editions, 2019). Her poems and lyric essays appear widely in literary publications including Agni, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and elsewhere. She’s an assistant professor in the MFA Writing Program and the Department of English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
