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* Finalist for the Headmistress Press Charlotte Mew Prize Renée Vivien (née Pauline Mary Tarn, 1877-1909) was an English expatriate who made her home in Paris during the Belle Époque. In 1903, Vivien's collection of translations and adaptations from the Ancient Greek poetry of Sappho became one of the first works of modern European lesbian literature to be published by a lesbian writer under her real name. This courageous act was the death-sentence of her literary career. Parisian critics who had praised the mysterious "R. Vivien" as a young man of poetic genius began to snub at first and then simply ignore the newly un-closeted woman poet. Even in the face of ridicule and disrespect, Vivien continued to write and publish poetry, short stories, translations, plays, epigrams, and a novel based on her real-life romances with Natalie Clifford Barney and the Baroness Hélène van Zuylen van Nyevelt van Haar (née Rothschild). Vivien's poetry is now available in English translation by Samantha Pious: A Crown of Violets (Headmistress Press, 2015). I think it's very rare to encounter a new lesbian poet through translation and I am very excited to support this collection in its positive obsession and literary innovation alike. If it is that we are encouraged to each become the lover of Renée Vivien through her work, then this translator has succeeded in making the poet's wishes as transparent as an invitation can be: "The nave has been adorned to welcome you aright."Meg Day, Judge of the Charlotte Mew Prize This is an invaluable collection that brings Renée Vivien to life for English-speaking readers. Émigrée and sexual adventurer, Vivien wrote poetry strewn with broken harps and beautiful corpses. Pious's delicate but fearless translations draw out the bruised passions and troubadour rhythms that make Vivien essential reading for anyone interested in lesbian literature, fin-de-siècle poetics, or the agonies of sensual love.Kate Thomas, author of Postal Pleasures: Sex, Scandal and Victorian Letters

Amy Lowell's contemporaries, writing at a time when lesbians were invisible, described her as an old maid. But as Lillian Faderman argues, Lowell wrote "some of the most remarkable, barely encoded, lesbian poems since Sappho," while living in a Boston marriage with her muse, Ada Dwyer Russell. Lady of the Moon offers a combination of three voices on the Boston marriage of Amy Lowell and Ada Dwyer Russell. The first part contains a selection of Lowell's love poems to Ada. The second part contains a scholarly essay by Lillian Faderman that analyzes these poems in relation to Lowell's life. The third part contains a 27-sonnet sequence by Mary Meriam which draws from the first two parts and supports the story with imaginative details. In this jewel of a volume, a great love is reanimated. Imagist Amy Lowell's love poems to actress Ada Russell, pioneering lesbian-feminist scholar Lillian Faderman's landmark essay on Lowell and Russell, and contemporary poet Mary Meriam's heartfelt sonnet sequence speaking to Russell in Lowell's voice, combine to create a remarkable erotic and poetic event. Like Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Lowell and Russell had a great creative partnership that made an indelible mark on literary and lesbian history. Lowell called her "tense and urgent love" for Russell an "amethyst garden;" today's readers will find gems of all colors in Lady of the Moon.-Lisa L. Moore, author of Sister Arts: The Erotics of Lesbian Landscapes (Lambda Literary Award, 2012), and Professor of English and Women's and Gender Studies, The University of Texas at Austin What an erotic trinity! Amy Lowell's fiery poems about Ada Dwyer Russell; Lillian Faderman's illuminating essay about the couple and their "Boston marriage"; and Mary Meriam's contemporary poems in Lowell's lustful voice. Forget "Amygism" and "Patterns" with this brilliantly edited selection of works by and about Amy Lowell, Mary Meriam restores Lowell to her rightful status as a groundbreaking feminist poet.-Julie Kane, National Poetry Series winner and recent Louisiana Poet Laureate Mary Meriam writes as Amy Lowell and her beloved Ada. She imagines, in a variety of sonnet forms, the richness that Lowell removed from her own love poems. While making use of Lowell's language, the sonnets' insistence on the psychological fullness of the two women and their relationship unsettles the century-old sounds so that a sense of quaint mimicry falls quickly by the wayside. The organization of the volume's three parts is astute, though, finally, these sonnets cohere into a whole of their own.-Marcia Karp, poet and translator

"I wish," writes Maureen Bocka in First name Barbie last name Doll, "I could tell you my history / Make you see past all the pink distractions." With apologies to Aqua, the Barbie girl's life in plastic isn't always so fantastic. These dazzling, clear-eyed poems deftly explore love, loss, betrayal, and inequality in a world where Dreamhouse closets are shut so tight, even President Barbie declares, "If it's ever known my friends and I / are lesbians we'll be incinerated for sure." Thank goodness Bocka is here to rip those pink doors open and report fearlessly on the secrets behind them.-T.A. Noonan, author of The Bone Folders, Petticoat Government, and four sparks fall

Tiger laughs when you push / She already has dirt with her donut / and knows the cage is cardboard. The poems in Tiger Laughs When You Push are full of wit, lyric ingenuity, and imaginative acuteness. Heartcracked, I need cereal lowjack / fruit GPS / to get out from under / the cheesy cheers. Ruth Lehrer's virtuosity for the use of detail, for image, for sound - is unique and a great great gift to encounter. These poems are insightful and provocative. They are marvelous. - Emily Pettit, author of Goat in the Snow From a mother who sends her daughter a "napkin of rotted teeth" to a parrot that squawks in "lilting Lithuanian" to Eden who "squatted menstrual blood paintings" the poems in Tiger Laughs When You Push constantly shock the reader with original imagery, startling language, keen observation, and bigness of heart. And if that wasn't enough, dayenu, the lines are scattered with a bagel here, a bialy there, cheese blintzes, hot pastrami, applesauce, sour cream and more. These poems made my mouth water and left me hungry for more of Ruth Lehrer's fine poems.- Lesléa Newman, author of I Carry My Mother

* Selected for the 2016 American Library Association Over the Rainbow List Song is mysterious. It seems to arise when the separation between sophistication and simplicity has been submerged in deep water. Song is that ringing-out of the wrung heart whereby what is personal becomes what is universal-and so it is fitting that all the archetypal seasons in Mary Meriam's Girlie Calendar have their own specific songs to share, their own ardent delights. Yet these delights are hard-fought, because song is also that inspiring moment of transcendence so in evidence in the courage of these lines: "A knife of pain may bend you over double, / but hover, swing from your trapeze, breathe." Mary Meriam's songs are thus both breath-taking and breath-giving. Indeed, there is a rigor of architecture in these poems, as well as in the construction of the book as a whole, that is exacting, deliberate, astonishingly disciplined-and yet surrendering to such songs, as a reader, seems as natural as breathing. "Let steel become a sigh," she sings to herself in her month of August. Those five words rise and fall as an exquisitely fragile monument to all song. I would even go so far as to say that they are a powerful medicine for what ails us.-R. Nemo Hill, Author of When Men Bow Down and Publisher of EXOT Books

*Selected for the Best Books List for June 2014 by Grace Cavalieri of the Washington Independent Review of Books The editor travelled for several decades throughout the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, and Australia (with side trips to Finland, France, and Greece) to collect the rarest, most beautiful, most irresistible contemporary sonnets. The trip was fruitful. Among many colorful characters, the editor found Old Tom in the garden, a bull rider from the American West, God's secretary in His Office, the magician's bashful daughter, and Aunt Mim and Uncle Jimmy at the Rehab Lounge. Published by Headmistress Press on March 31, 2014, Irresistible Sonnets consists of 71 sonnets by 71 living poets. There are city poets, country poets, older poets, younger poets, 43 women poets, 28 men poets, rising poets, and poets laureate. Of requiems, revivals, and chores, death and desire, remembrance and music, 'sapphire dawns' and 'dew-sharp gardens, ' lingering language-every poem in this collection sings words in new ways. Some tell stories with beginnings and endings lost in thought; grand dreams, simple dreams, the prosaic becomes profound. In this book of poetry, of sonnets, a single poetic shape is reshaped by diverse modern poets who, as Mary Meriam states in her Preface, create 'an intimate dance between poet and form.' This is a treasure that you must allow to ravish you slowly.-Robin Williams, Author of Sweet Swan of Avon: Did a Woman Write Shakespeare? The sonnet has seen a resurgence in recent years, and with that resurgence we have gotten anthologies of the things, to the point that the bar for a new multi-author collection of sonnets is pretty damn high. "Irresistible Sonnets"? As in "sonnets that one cannot resist, even with... I dunno... Jedi Mind Tricks or some such"? Really? Well, now that you mention it.... Mary Meriam of Headmistress Press (fantastic name!) has created a varied anthology with many names I knew and others I'm glad I know now. Yet as a book, despite the multitude of styles herein and indeed through their combination, Irresistible Sonnets has a personality, at times whimsical, at times serious, but always passionate. You should get this book. I would if I were you.-Quincy R. Lehr, poet, critic, and general man-about-town The sonnet embodies the "turn" (volta) from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, and today still offers us a turn towards introspection, interior dialogue and contemplation. Its fourteen lines provide the poet with a nutshell of infinite space: challenging, compact, yet liberating-even surprising-with its possibilities of multifaceted form. This stunning collection of "Irresistible Sonnets", like a handful of snowflakes, contains no two alike. They continue a tradition initiated by Petrarch, Dante and Sidney-a dialogue between self and other self-in which much more remains to be said.-Rayne Allinson, Author of A Monarchy of Letters: Royal Correspondence and English Diplomacy in the Reign of Elizabeth I Mary Meriam's anthology reminds us of the semantic and sonic miracles that can happen in the compressed room of the sonnet. From the elevated diction of Anne Stevenson's moving elegy "The Circle" and Anne Drysdale's humorously elegant portrait of "A Cat in the Garden" to intimate, colloquial portraits such as Jason Lee Brown's "Chores with my Father" and Suzanne J. Doyle's "Demon Rum," Meriam has assembled a collection of arresting, frequently astonishing poems that prove the sonnet is still alive and well, emotionally urgent, linguistically inventive, and, just as the title promises, irresistible.-Joy Ladin, American Poet

Any art from a marginalized group is first dismissed as necessarily trivial or lesser because it doesn't value the same ideals as the mainstream. It is only through iteration and resilience that the markers used to keep us out become the elements for which we are prized. That's why a journal devoted to lesbian poetry and art is vital: it rejects tokenism; it makes visible the common themes between otherwise dissimilar writers and artists; and, most importantly, it shows the range and prowess of those who would otherwise be limited to one feature of their work. -Eloise Stonborough, on Lavender Review at Ms. Lavender Review, born on Gay Pride Day, 2010, is an international, biannual e-zine dedicated to poetry and art by, about, and for lesbians, including whatever might appeal to a lesbian readership. This is Lavender Review's first foray into print, and represents a selection of poems from the first five years. The 48 contributors to this anthology include renowned and new lesbian poets; translations of Marina Tsvetaeva, Renée Vivien, and Sappho; some poems from the past by Amy Lowell, Charlotte Mew, Sara Teasdale, and others; and a few lesbian-friendly poems by straight and gay poets. ABOUT THE EDITORPoet Mary Meriam is the founder of Lavender Review, co-founder of Headmistress Press, editor of Irresistible Sonnets, and author of The Countess of Flatbroke, The Poet's Zodiac, and The Lillian Trilogy (Word Hot, Conjuring My Leafy Muse, and Girlie Calendar). She contributes essays, reviews, and interviews to Ms. Magazine Blog and The Gay & Lesbian Review. ABOUT THE PUBLISHERHeadmistress Press is an independent publisher of books of poetry by lesbians. As a small press, Headmistress is dedicated to honoring lesbian existence, discovering a range of lesbian voices, and promoting lesbian representation in the arts.

gina marie bernard's i am this girl is a triumph of truth and language, forging with fierce determination a no-punches pulled telling of a "tortured son" rising and "bleeding now as a daughter." From ashes, divination, and shattered glass, the self in this collection is summoned and examined with sincere scrutiny, in a land of tortured beauty where "[d]ecisions float on beds of glacial regret." This exploration is not for the faint of heart, and the heart of bernard's work is a "knee deep and thirsty" desire to drench us in longing-a longing to be completely seen and heard. With incredible skill and execution, bernard wraps us in the cocoon of her passionate pleas-impossible to emerge untouched, anything less than transformed.-Jen Rouse, author of Cake gina marie bernard's i am this girl takes my breath away. The speaker "[conceives] a second language," and it is through this language that we experience the speaker's struggle with identity, failed love, and anxiety; but we also experience lushness: "areolas aching," "dreams fan[ning] alluvial," and "night[s]/ of sage and purple rock." This syntax has a pulse, and it isn't going to shy away from either difficulty or beauty. This voice is compelling and spellbinding-i am this girl is stunning. -Flower Conroy, author of The Awful Suicidal Swans These poems by gina marie bernard demonstrate emotional intelligence and diamond grit. Both erudite and raw, the poems' richly textured language and precise images reveal the full human voice. At times achingly painful, and other times brash and bravely personal, bernard drops the curtain on shame, and openly courts redemption on the grounds of humans being-always beyond gender-both soul and body, terrifying in our need and love of absolute loyalty to that whole, and to each other. -Carol Ann Russell, author of Gypsy Taxi et. al.

Saturn coming out of its Retrograde is a beautiful and sweeping slideshow of textures and colors and feelings. A heart ripped open and poured out onto the pages, it comes at you fast and before you know it your tears join with the author's and the book is over and you find yourself grasping for more.>Saturn coming out of its Retrograde captures the essence of the author's personal experiences dealing with love, loss, mental health, and growth. This touching book will leave you speechless, thinking about life's extremities from a whole new perspective. You will feel nothing but raw emotion being delivered to you through the beautiful form of poetry. It is simply amazing.-Mei Gilbert

FINALIST FOR THE 2018 CHARLOTTE MEW PRIZE summer jade leavitt's mad girl's crush tweet is a landscape of individual and collective fragmented testimonies summoning themselves into a ghostly body through accumulation and regeneration. Pay attention to the traces of this kin-both whisper and cannon, dynamite and velvet.>Was reading this book on a very uncomfortable bench but was so addicted to the poems the form of the poems the pace of the poems I slowly got down on my knees in the grass refusing to stop reading to leave the bench fuck that bench THESE POEMS ARE MAGIC! summer jade leavitt please keep writing your genius beautiful poetry! -CAConrad, author of While Standing in Line for Death Delightfully queer in content and form, mad girl's crush tweet is a book that kept me re-reading for the simultaneous joy-pain-intimate-distance of working for (the speaker's) love - the one who knows that inside the space of the parenthesis is where "all that's real happens" - the digression and the amplification, the explanation and the afterthought - "I am/almost my own singing to the pain like it is a baby" - "(this is how/we)(stay alive)." To be queer is to celebrate living here (and I do) - in the squeeze of memories who have "(become open mouths)" - at the end where we are "(always arriving).-TC Tolbert, author of Gephyromania

Winner of the Charlotte Mew Prize The poems in Teeth & Teeth risk simplicity-of the line, of language, and ultimately of desire. Language here is not fantastical or flexed, but quiet and intentional, precise-language is allowed to feel, to labor, to pulse. Because of this, the poems' momentous hunger, anger, desire-the poems' "teeth" if you will-are urgently and deceivingly near. As in "Desire Diary," the desire is imperfect and inexplicable, a machine, even: Inside the mechanism, everyone / was handsome. Everyone / Came at it with a strange green / sound leaking from their / Lips. The momentum of desire in Teeth & Teeth-for a mother, a memory, a lover, a knowing, a world-is palpable and fast.>"Grief creates its own fire," writes Reagler in "Re-Routed," part of a collection devastating and warm, dazzling, clarifying, unpredictable, and which feels inevitable. What sustenance there is in finding language that speaks of inadequacy as a beginning and of faith as faith's absence. Through the poems we inhabit the void, our efforts to fill it, and affirm desire as unexpected fulfillment in itself.>Robin Reagler's Teeth & Teeth is a wild-mouthed dispatch from the cities of mourning we all inhabit, a desperate love letter to the waiting selves which grow out of exile from normalcy. In the face of the wearing down of the body, despite loss, these poems demand gratitude for the fierce habits of the living. -Ching-In Chen