We are very excited to announce that Sliver of Stone contributor Geraldine Connolly‘s new book of poetry, Aileron, is now available from Terrapin Books.  You can order a copy from Amazon (including a Kindle version).

Geraldine Connolly’s Aileron sensuously evokes the plenty of life—the “spiky chestnut grenade” of the buckeye tree, the “buttery sweetness” of the Seckel Pear—while moving through various landscapes, each precisely tuned to “this one small thing that lives along the road of my mind.” Yet, amid these riches, a perspective of loss is ever present in “a landscape/ whose immanence turns / to ashes beneath my gaze.” In poems marked by vivid language of the natural world and mindful of ecological loss, the poet invites the reader “to turn and tilt, to stay aloft.”
~ Rebecca Seiferle

In Geraldine Connolly’s Aileron an inheritance proves to be a “raft of broken bread,” yet memories of piercing beauty linger. So much of the sensuous world settles into these poems: lizards, starlings, quail, a chestnut “polished as a mahogany piano.” Brilliant images are backlit with emotions that resemble acute homesickness. What’s most loved may vanish—but not without first coming to vivid life in these remarkable, fully realized poems.
~ Lee Upton

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Sliver of Stone previously published a poem by Chris Abbate titled “Hartford, 1947.” This poem is now included in Chris’s first book of poetry, Talk About God (Main Street Rag, 2017)

“God is the glue for connection and mystery in Chris Abbate’s Talk About God, a masterful debut collection. These poems are about his Catholic childhood, the yearning to break away from convention and the unyielding need for patterns to manage the unforgiving nature of life. Yet, most of all, these poems speak of the connections between fathers and sons, husbands and wives, and friends and neighbors. Abbate explores the chaos of adolescence and many years later, reflects on the breakup of his parents’ over fifty-year marriage through the exacting lens of ritual and geometry with carefully nuanced images that earn every bit of their screen time. Every poem in Talk About God reminds you to feel gratitude for the beauty of the present moment and not to forget how you can create a joyous and meaningful life.”
~ Alice Osborn, author of Heroes without Capes

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Last year, our friend Campbell McGrath selected Darren Demaree‘s manuscript Two Towns Over as the winner of the Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and this year at AWP Trio House will be launching the book.

“It’s really been an incredible experience, and I wanted to share it with you,” Darren wrote to Sliver of Stone.

“Darren is a dangerous dreamer, concocting love poems to his home state, and pastorals to his true love. But there’s always something more beneath the surface: sex and violence, villainy, mutilation, uneasy redemption and troubled ecstasy. These poems are pins pressed deep in the disfigured heart of America. They work a dark magic on the reader — they’re unsettling in necessary ways.”
~ Christopher Michel

In Issue 9, Sliver of Stone published a poem titled “La Llorona’s Life as a Cautionary Tale” by Paul David Adkins.

We’re happy to learn that Lit Riot Press has published the author’s debut full-length collection La Doña, La Llorona, which includes this poem.

Her’s a link to the book on Amazon.

Paul David Adkins lives in New York and works as a counselor. Aside from La Doña, La Llorona, he has three chapbooks (Stick Up, The Great Crochet Question, and The Upside Down House). He served in the US Army for 21 years, three months, and 18 days, deploying to Iraq or Afghanistan for 1,277 days. Lit Riot Press will publish two books concerning his military experiences in Fall ’16, entitled Operational Terms and Graphics and Flying Over Baghdad with Sylvia Plath.

We wish you great success, Paul David!

Our congratulations also go to Issue 3 contributor Geoffrey Philp who recently released Garvey’s Ghost.

“It’s not often that a writer describes a ‘criminal’ as their hero, but the outlaw in question isn’t just anyone — it’s Jamaican-born civil rights leader Marcus Garvey. After 20 years of writing, Jamaican author Geoffrey Philp, whose children went to the same high school as Trayvon Martin (the African American teenager who was shot and killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer in Florida in 2012), has finally published his first novel, Garvey’s Ghost.”
(Atiba Rogers, Global Voices)

Born in Jamaica, Geoffrey Philp has published two novels, five volumes of poetry, two short-story collections, and three children’s books. His work is represented in nearly every anthology of Caribbean literature, and he is one of the few writers whose work has been published in the Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories and Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse. He is currently working on a collection of poems, Letter from Marcus Garvey. A graduate of the University of Miami, where he earned an MA in English, Philp teaches English at the InterAmerican Campus of Miami Dade College.

Way to go, Geoffrey!