Paper Crown

[Heather Christle is] among the small handful of authors whose books I reflexively, half-consciously reach toward whenever I need inspiration, consolation, delight. Nobody thinks like her' Kaveh Akbar, Electric Literature'This is a stunning book' Jericho Brown'A striking celebration of risk and beauty' Kit Fan, GuardianPaper Crown is Heather Christle's first new collection of poems in over a decade. Throughout these exuberant poems, Christle conjures moments when the world's events - a child's words, early twentieth-century predictions of drone warfare, dinners with friends - alight themselves with the odd logic of dreams and serendipity. With tenderness and verse, honesty and curiosity, Paper Crown invites readers to look up from its pages and recognise that the day going on around them could very well be its own poem. MistakeFor years I have seendead animals on the highwayand grieved for them only to realize they arenot dead animalsthey are t shirtsor bits of blown tireand I have foundmyself with thisexcess of griefI have made with no object to letit spill over andI have not knownwhere to put it orkeep it and then todayI thought I knowI can give it to you