A Poem and A Piece

December 11, 2023 Tana Welch

Late 2023 is flush with publications! “Letter to Those Who Wanted Me”—one of my favorite poems from In Parachutes Descending—appeared in the winter edition of the Colorado Review. You can read it here.

My article "Better Medicine: Shared Suffering and Chronic Vulnerability in Brian Teare's The Empty Form Goes All the Way to Heaven" also made its way to the most recent issue of Literature and Medicine.

A posthumanist understanding of the body does not view "illness" and "health" as properties of the individual body, but as emergent features of the relationships between bodies. As such, a relational view of health opens up avenues for the betterment of both human bodies and their social and physical environments. Drawing on posthumanism and the ethics of vulnerability, this article demonstrates how Brian Teare's The Empty Form Goes All the Way to Heaven (2015) provides a different way of thinking (and doing) illness, death, and vulnerability. With his acceptance and promotion of the body's dynamic materiality and chronic vulnerability, Teare advances a posthuman ethics based on our shared embodied condition.

An Introduction to Seasteading

January 27, 2020 Tana Welch

I’m pleased to announce the publication of my first “long” poem (the long ones are always so hard to place!). If you want to know more about the Seasteading movement, visit Pleiades Volume 40 . This six-page poem appears alongside a really cool poetic celebration of the periodic table. You can also read “Seasteading” here.

"No One Should Feel That Alone" up at Green Mountains Review

September 6, 2019 Tana Welch

I’m excited and grateful to have another poem from my second manuscript up at Green Mountains Review. And it comes with this beautiful apropos photo:

Bared: Contemporary Poetry and Art on Bras and Breasts

January 6, 2017 Tana Welch

Pleased to have a poem included in this new anthology, just out from Les Femmes Folles Books and edited by the excellent Laura Madeline Wiseman.

Bared: Contemporary Poetry and Art on Bras and Breasts

Les Femmes Folles Books, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-692-82022-3

Bared: Contemporary Poetry and Art on Bras and Breasts anthology collects the work of 170 contemporary women poets and artists. Exploring the gendered narratives that clothe and fashion the body, gender subversion, the traditional male gaze, feminist theories, and more, the artists and poets collected in Bared: Contemporary Poetry and Art on Bras and Breasts resist given narratives about the breast and bra by boldly presenting alternatives in written and visual art. The poetry and art of Bared consider commodification, training bras, mammograms, bra factories, biopsies, bra-fit, pencil tests, cancer, mastectomies, sexuality, implants, nursing, representation, and so much more, highlighting the importance of women’s bodies now and in the coming years.

“In this anthology, Kara Maria’s raw yet beautiful painted depictions of women holding up their bruised breasts, work alongside Kimberly L. Becker’s poem, heartfully and passionately honoring all that comes with being bound to these patches of round skin on our chests Nicola Santalucia’s playful narrative illustrations bring something new with Andrea Witzke Slot’s warm poetic contribution of women who find kinship in the park. Janelle Cordello’s sweet and sinuous line drawing and watercolor figures of women at ease in their underclothes as though in a locker room, cause more pause when taken in with Tara Betts’ artful poem about women models and Ann Bracken’s poem of a secretive tryst. Florine Desmonthe’s dark charcoal figures in abstracted muted backgrounds after reading Susanna Childress’ self-portrait poem brings a raw authenticity.” – Sally Deskins

Full List of Contributors

New Poems

August 16, 2016 Tana Welch

"Not this Boston" and "Expect Any Answer" appeared in the Summer 2016 issue of the Colorado Review.

These are the first poems published from my new manuscript, and the first poems published post-Latest Volcano. Another poem, "The Real Nightmare," is set to appear in the Winter 2016 issue of Prairie Schooner.

I'm very grateful to the editors of these two journals for their interest in my new work!