Everything Is Water: Poems Volume 13 - Paperback

by Chelsea Krieg (Author)

Everything Is Water is an open letter to caregivers as the speaker grapples with her partner's life-threatening illness, pregnancy and new motherhood, and marriage. Growing up on the Virginia coast, the speaker knows the water's danger and allure--asks, what is beneath, what has control in so much open and unknown space? The speaker continues to feel this unease in everything as she navigates fear, identity, and loss. Everything is water. Everything is the surface tension created by the unknown. The collection often returns to the water and those inhabiting it, but it also looks to winged creatures, those on land, and those who are in between elements as they wrestle with their own survival. Water is an element that sustains and devours. When danger comes, we wonder when it will end. We ask how we can live with loss. Is it easier to run away? To let go? Everything Is Water leaves the reader suspended, treading water alongside the speaker as she seeks to answer these questions.

The TRP Southern Poetry Breakthrough Series: Virginia

Author Biography

CHELSEA KRIEG was raised in southeastern Virginia. She received an MFA in poetry from North Carolina State University. Her work may be found in Fairy Tale Review, Writing the Land: Virginia Anthology, Terrain.org, Gulf Coast, New South, The Southern Poetry Anthology Vol. IX: Virginia, and elsewhere. She was runner-up in Hub City's New Southern Voices 2023 Poetry Prize and a finalist for the New South 2021 Poetry Prize. Chelsea lives in Durham, NC, and teaches creative writing at North Carolina State University, where she also codirects the MFA Program.