Practising Ascending

Poetry Collection by Nadine Hitchiner.

Nadine Hitchiner is a German writer and author of the chapbook Bruises, Birthmarks & Other Calamities (Cathexis Northwest Press, 2021). She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and was named a 2023 Best of the Net Finalist. Her work was published in GASHER, Bending Genres, Hayden's Ferry Review, The Citron Review and others. She lives in her hometown with her husband and their dog.
"'It's difficult to tell apart what the heart remembers, and what the mind remembers' is a riveting line from Practising Ascending, a collection by Nadine Hitchiner. In this sprawling book Hitchiner disentangles what the heart and mind claim as absence, examines what they carry as grief, and commemorates what they hold as memory. Hitchiner writes a striking, precise line with a haunting, exquisite aesthetic. This is a superb debut."
- Jose Hernandez Diaz, author of The Fire Eater, Bad Mexican, Bad American, & The Parachutist.
"Nadine Hitchiner's collection Practising Ascending is a powerful volume of enchantment and magic. Told with clear-eyed vulnerability and intimacy, Hitchiner takes us on an exploratory journey of family, love, grief, lineage, religion, and daughterhood, each poem painted against the backdrops of food, nature, animal, body, and soft places. I was spellbound by her gorgeous prose and poetry, her quiet disruption of the blank page, each line a satisfying accompaniment to the next. Most of all, I appreciated its center, its emotional core wherein lies Hitchiner and her husband through the various waves of their lives and relationship, enthralling me with each poem and page. By the end of the collection, my role as a reader became clear: to ascend this world into hers."
- Sofía Aguilar, author of STREAMING SERVICE: season two

"Nadine Hitchiner's Practising Ascending is a collection of poetry that crochets insight and mundanity, lyricism and humor. These poems present a world in which everything banal is beautiful and vulnerability is vital. Hitchiner writes the kind of poems that make other poets say, "I wish I'd written that!" (See: "Self-Portrait as Tinder" and "What Do You Expect Me to Say, Clearly I was Disappointed") Behind her signature dazzling metaphors and similes are beautiful and pulsing truths. This is a hard book to put down."
- Lexi Pelle, author of Let Go With The Lights On