Poetry Reading: Matthew Nienow, Ed Skoog, Emily Kendal Frey
About If Nothing:
When mid-life collides with the precariousness of alcoholism, the vulnerability of opening oneself to a second coming-of-age becomes an ecstatic cry in poems that confront pain and the need for forgiveness. An unvarnished and direct accounting of the journey to sobriety, of struggles with mental health, and with the challenges of longing and loss, If Nothing traverses the sting of shame, the earnestness of joy, and the desire for absolution. Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr and Calling a Wolf a Wolf, says: "Matthew Nienow shows us in If Nothing that he is a poet of birth, of making and making anew... This is powerful medicine, salve for earnest souls in an era of ethical infantilization. There is grace here, real grace made wise by having known real grief; If Nothing is a lasting book."
Matthew Nienow's debut collection, House of Water, was published by Alice James Books in 2016. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such venues as 32 Poems, Georgia Review, New England Review, and Poetry. A former Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellow, he has also received fellowships and support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Elizabeth George Foundation, Artist Trust, and 4Culture. He lives in Port Townsend, Washington with his wife and two sons where he is pursuing a degree in Mental Health Counseling.
Ed Skoog is the author of four collections of poetry from Copper Canyon Press, most recently Travelers Leaving for the City. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, The New Republic, and elsewhere. He lives in Portland and works at Reed College.
Emily Kendal Frey lives in Portland, Oregon. She is the author of the poetry collections The Grief Performance and Sorrow Arrow (which won the Oregon Book Award). Her latest collection, Lovability, is out from Fonograf Editions. She is a
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