Join me, poet Elisabeth Blair, to celebrate the launch of my first book, 'because God loves the wasp,' released August 30, 2022, by Unsolicited Press. The evening will include readings from the book, a Q&A, and selling and signing copies. It will also be a celebration of this milestone in my career with the VT poetry community, who have emphatically, lovingly supported me ever since I wandered into the area 5 years ago.

ABOUT THE BOOK: A memoir in verse, Elisabeth Blair’s because God loves the wasp documents two and a half years she spent living in two abusive facilities for “troubled teens” during the late 1990s. The wilderness camp and emotional growth boarding school were modeled on the teachings and tenets of Synanon, a mid-20th-century cult. Alternating between painful clarity and surreal metaphor, the poems grapple with the shock and disorientation of being taken away in the middle of the night by strangers; the bewilderment of navigating expectations in an environment of institutionalized bullying, shunning, and sleep deprivation; and the gravity of the adulthood that follows. The book’s tight corralling of traumas takes aim at the notion that inducing fear, despair, and shipwrecked helplessness can rehabilitate a child—the catastrophic doctrine of “tough love.”

Blair’s language is barbed, destabilizing, and very much alive. This is an important book.<<

• Rae Armantrout, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry