I’ve been sitting on this a couple of days now, but I wanted to finish reading Amanda Auchter‘s wonderful chapbook Light Under Skin from Finishing Line Press. As Editor of Pebble Lake Review, Amanda has published a handful of my work over the last few years, a short story PLR nominated for a Pushcart Prize, a poem collected in my chapbook Ghost Girl (Pudding House, 2010), two poems from my dissertation on the 19^th century suffragist Matilda Fletcher are in PLR‘s current issue, and forthcoming the poem “In the Field,” collected in my forthcoming book Sprung from San Fransisco Bay Press. So I was so excited when I asked Amanda to write a blurb for Sprung and she said, Yes! Her book The Glass Crib won the Zone 3 Press first book award and is due out later this year. I’m very much looking to reading it.

Here’s Amanda:

Laura Madeline Wiseman’s risqué collection, Sprung, is bold and exacting of our assumptions of gendered relationships and sexual identity. This is a dazzling collection and given the focus of the work, is distinctly feminine in its narrative arc and scope. Sprung is an intelligent, highly imaginative collection filled with sensuality and lyrical wildness which makes it a treasure to read.

Yeah! Thanks Amanda!

Yeah! Here’s a complete sneak peek of the front cover of my book Sprung forthcoming from San Francisco Bay Press.

The photograph is by the wonderful artist Lisa Link, who I met when she was a visiting artist who gave a lecture on Warnings at the University of Arizona in 2003. I interviewed Lisa in the feminist ‘zine, Empowerment4women about her work. Her ten year touring collection, Warnings, compares contemporary anti-feminist messages on reproduction to government propaganda in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. Lisa’s research concluded that anti-choice and Nazi groups have strikingly identical viewpoints. Here’s an example from that exhibit:

Her various collections and works are striking, visceral, and smart. Lisa received a bachelor’s degree from Harvard and a MFA from University of Boulder Colorado. She’s taught at Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild, Boston Arts Academy, University of Colorado at Boulder and University of Massachusetts. She has been the recipient of several artist awards including the Puffin Foundation Award and Massachusetts Cultural Council Professional Development Grant.

Lisa’s cover art for my book Sprung is not in one of her collections nor in one of her shows. I’m honored to have it as my cover. Lisa is able to capture much in a single image and her work on the body connects with the powerful questioning in Sprung.

Here’s the synopsis on Sprung:

Sprung explores the interplay between imagination and reality, language and myth, objectification and sexuality, parts and whole. Imaginary (and often unruly) body parts often embody erotized narratives with words (slang or otherwise) that are taboo. We’re told not to say or speak them. Silences become something we’re expected to carry, making the act of speaking and writing to break that silence, powerful. Sprung seeks to examine and ultimately transform the ways the English language genders and sexualizes.

Yeah! Thanks, Lisa. I’m thrilled and honored to feature such an accomplished artist on my book.