Felicia Zamora

Felicia Zamora is the author of the poetry books "Quotient," "Body of Render," winner of the 2018 Benjamin Saltman Award from Red Hen Press, "Instrument of Gaps," "& in Open, Marvel," and "Of Form & Gather," winner of the 2016 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. She is a 2019 CantoMundo Fellow, won the 2015 Tomaž Šalamun Prize from Verse and was the 2017 Poet Laureate for Fort Collins, Colo. Her published works may be found or forthcoming in Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Alaska Quarterly Review, Crazyhorse, Indiana Review, Lana Turner, North American Review, Poetry Daily, Prairie Schooner, The Cincinnati Review, The Georgia Review, The Missouri Review Poem-of-the-Week, The Nation, Verse Daily, West Branch and others. She received her master's of fine arts from Colorado State University, where she teaches creative writing courses online and is the Associate Poetry Editor for the Colorado Review. She lives in Arizona and is the Program Manager for the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands at Arizona State University.

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Books:

Body of Render

Poetry
Red Hen Press
May 2019
ISBN 9781597099752
100 pages
$16.95, NYP

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Instrument of Gaps

Poetry
Slope Editions
August 2018
ISBN 9780988522169
86 pages
$14.95, OUTOFSTOCK

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Poetry. Our intricate thinking and our ability to process the world deeply connect us as human beings. Yet we conjure inhibitors to limit our interactions with each other such as race, class, species, landscape, and limitations of understanding. Despite the barriers we construct, we are relative to each other. INSTRUMENT OF GAPS explores these intersections of humanity's innocence, curiosities, influences, impact on environments, and how we all carried along by other. In relentless acknowledgement of the gaps that exist in the mind, in society, in language, on the page, and in our natural behaviors, the poems work to uncover new ways of thinking for both writer and reader. The poems move fluidly from vivid events of personal past, to contemplation on events around the world, to humanity's role on current environmental issues, and finally to preparation for action. The poems traverse witness. Whether the lens be focused on a spider in mid-balloon, a woman in a life vest, or a mouse in an oven drawer, a call to witness exists. In witness, we fall implicated in both the wonders and the horrors of a life in motion. Our true actions reveal to be both ghastly and lovely toward each other and our planet. Our instinct may be to bridge the divides between what we witness and how we navigate the world. Are we ready for what finds us? Full of inadequate questions, visceral memories, desires, choruses, pain, and stories, the poems seeks self-discovery and societal impact on the natural world. More/less