Overview

A retablo is a painting created in thanks for divine protection or a miracle. In this luminous collection, Michelle Penn transposes the art form into poems that explore aspects of the female experience. Her retablos capture moments of vulnerability, confrontations with politics and societal ideals, the struggle to construct a self, and the search for something to believe in when protection and miracles seem rare. A rich palette of images-from nuclear blast glass and an atomic Madonna to a sword-swallowing Pierrot and a muse-for-hire-creates a compelling picture of endurance, defiance, and ultimately, hope.

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9781837380060

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Reviews

""These are votive offerings, testings of words, laced with blood and lit with devastating intensity. I found them very powerful."" —Chrissy Williams ""Michelle Penn's retablos are eloquent and profound curiosities. Like the earliest manifestations of lyric, these poems have a 'sung' quality that can be felt within the body. The resulting sound is a howling of 'pain into mountains of scree' that 'hungers to become ephemeral as wind.' But even as these poem-objects inhabit ancient traditions, they are simultaneously futuristic, political and intimately strange - as though the poet has invented a new medium embracing dance, sculpture, relic-assemblage and oratorio. Such originality is rare."" —Kathryn Maris

Author Information

Michelle Penn is the author of the book-length poem, Paper Crusade (Arachne Press, 2022) and the chapbook, Self-portrait as a diviner, failing (Paper Swans Press, 2018). Recent poems have appeared in journals on both sides of the Atlantic, including 'Anthropocene', 'Stand', 'The London Magazine' and 'PN Review'.  As part of Corrupted Poetry (with Nic Stringer and Fiona Larkin), she hosts innovative poetry/art/music events in London.When not writing poetry, Michelle works on interpretation projects for museums and cultural sites worldwide.

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