Voyage of Verse

A Poetry Anthology

Paisley Rekdal

Paisley Rekdal is an esteemed poet and author whose work has received numerous awards and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Art Fellowship, the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Fellowship, amongst many others. She has just been awarded the prestigious 2024 Kingsley Tufts Prize for West: A Translation. Paisley’s poems and essays have been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review, The New Republic, amongst numerous other publications. Paisley is the author of 11 books of poetry and nonfiction, in which she expertly negotiates challenging issues of race, sexuality, myth, suffering, and identity. Her writing has been described as having “riveting poetic alchemy“. Paisley is a Distinguished Professor at The University of Utah, and served as Utah’s Poet Laureate from 2017-2022. Paisley’s extensive oeuvre of poems, nonfiction work and digital projects can be read here:
An arresting poem by Paisley Rekdal can be read here:
Birthday Poem

Birthday Poem
by Paisley Rekdal

It is important to remember that you will die,
lifting the fork with the sheep's brain
lovingly speared on it to the mouth: the little
piece smooth on the one side as a baby
mouse pickled in wine; on the other, blood-
plush and intestinal atop its bed of lentils.
The lentils were once picked over for stones
in the fields of India perhaps, the sun
shining into tractor blades slow moving
as the swimmer’s arms that pierce,
then rise, then pierce again the cold
water of this river outside your window called
The Heart or The Breast, even, but meaning
something more than this, beyond
the crudeness of flesh, though what
is crude about flesh anyway, watching yourself
every day lose another bit of luster?
It is wrong to say one kind of beauty
replaces another. Isn’t it your heart
along with its breast muscles that
has started to weaken; solace
isn’t possible for every loss, or why else
should we clutch, stroke, grasp, love
the little powers we once were born with?
Perhaps the worst thing in the world
would be to live forever.
Otherwise, what would be the point
of memory, without which
we would have nothing to hurt
or placate ourselves with later?
Look. It is only getting worse
from here on out. Thank God. Otherwise
the sun on this filthy river
could never be as boring or as poignant,
the sheep’s brain trembling on the fork
wouldn’t seem once stung
by the tang of grass, by the call
of some body distant and beloved to it
still singing through the milk. The fork
would be only a fork, and not the cool
heft of it between your fingers, the scratch
of lemon in the lentils, onions, parsley
slick with blood; food that,
even as you lift it to your mouth,
you never thought you’d eat. And do.

Yrsa Daley-Ward

Yrsa is a celebrated author, actor and screenwriter of Jamaican and Nigerian heritage. She is known for her courageous original voice; she artfully fuses poetry with theatre, music and storytelling. Yrsa writes fearlessly about her journey, traversing topics of identity, race, mental health, and femininity. Yrsa has been quoted as saying “If you’re afraid to write it, that’s a good sign. I suppose you know you’re writing the truth when you’re terrified“. She is most known for her debut book, Bone, as well as for her live poetry performances. Her autobiographical novel, The Terrible, a coming-of-age tour de force, was awarded the prestigious PEN/Ackerley Prize in 2019. Yrsa’s work has been featured in many publications worldwide, including Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Dazed, and Notion.
Yrsa’s many explorations and projects can be discovered on
An exceptional poem by Yrsa can be read here:
Mental Health

Mental Health
by Yrsa Daley-Ward

If you’re walking down an aisle with a
dim, fluorescent hue
by the tinned fish and canned beans
strip lighting above, cracked tiles
beneath
with the realization that most things
are futile
and get the sudden urge to end it all
don’t stop. Call a friend.
Call your mother if you have one
and, if you can stand her,
listen to her talk about the price of
canned fish and tinned beans.
Call the speaking clock. Know that
whatever time it says is the time that
everything has to change.
Leave the damn aisle.
Don’t go anywhere where they sell
sweets, chips, booze,
fast love or lottery tickets.

See that just outside there are people-
lined streets that are emptier than
your insides,
skies darker than your own.
Look for yourself, because it never
helps to hear from anyone else.

If you are one of those “running
around town like mad” people,
people who jump from tall buildings,
buildings with glass fronts and not enough
air
if you are failing to x a broken story
if you have been cooped up for far
too long in a very high tower in a
dangerously low state
plenty of TV channels and TV
dinners. Plenty of biscuits, chocolate
desserts, cake and plenty of wine
but no love for miles and miles

if you did not get up for work today
if it has been afternoon for hours
and the silence is keeping you awake,
if you only remember how to draw
your breath in and out like waves of
thick tar cooling,
if you are wishing it later,
pulling the sun down with your
prayers, leave the damn bed.
Wash the damn walls. Crack open a
window
even in the rain. Even in the snow.

Listen to the church bells outside.
Know that however many times they
chime is half the number of changes
you have to make.

Stop trying to die. Serve your time here.
Do your time.

Clean out the fridge.
throw away the soya milk. Soya milk
is made from children’s tears. Put
flowers on the table. Stand them in a
measuring jug. Chop raw vegetables if
you have them.
Know that if you are hungry for
something but you can’t think what
you are, more often than not, only
love-thirsty
only bored.

When the blood in your body is
weary to flow,
when your bones are heavy though
hollow
if you have made it past thirty
celebrate
and if you haven’t yet,
rejoice. Know that there is a time
coming in your life when dirt settles
and the patterns form a picture.

If you dream of the city but you live
in the country
milk the damn cows.
Sell the damn sheep.

Know that they will be wishing you
well
posing for pictures on milk cartons or
running over lush hills to be counted
at the beginning of somebody else’s
dream.
See, they never held you back.
It was you, only you.

Malia Chung

Malia started writing poetry in a middle school English class. While in high school, her poems received numerous awards and honorable mentions including ones from the Scholastic Art and Writing Competitions (multiple Gold and Silver Keys), the Helen Creeley Poetry Prize, the Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Poetry Prize, the Smith College Poetry Prize and Apprentice Writer/Susquehanna University. She is a current junior at Princeton University, where she was recently awarded the 2023 Bain-Swiggett Poetry Prize for her poem “Ghazal for Fall”. Malia’s writing pursuits extend beyond poetry, to non-fiction and journalism. She is a creative writing mentor to many younger students who are just starting on their voyage of verse. 
An award-winning poem by Malia can be read here:
Crabbing in Bethany, Delaware

Crabbing in Bethany, Delaware
by Malia Chung

He told me how he caught
blue crabs off the dock sinking
in wet sand and beer cans behind the beach cottage, splitting
the haul with his immigrant mother who cooked until
the pale bodies flushed red. He used to lure them with chicken
necks bought for ten cents a piece, money
from returnable Coke bottles stolen
from the neighbors’ yards. He remembers still
how she ate them: slurping the soft
flesh from the inner skeleton, the hack
and hiss of screen doors shuddering in their frames,
blackened nails from umpteen packs of Merits,
the “Who’s your boy?” and “What you looking at?”
Red-faced Floyd West lighting stray cats afire,
the Austin boys belt-whipped on their front porch.
This was being mixed in rural Delaware.
Sheryl wheezing in her yard, hair in curlers, bloated ticks
hanging from dogs’ ears, and the ex-Green Beret who snuck boys
his homemade wine. This was to be mixed
up in rural Delaware in the ‘80s.
My father promises we’ll go crabbing
sometime, buy the necks
and stand above the marsh stream on the wooden bridge
in another state.
He tells me: the trick
to crabbing is tickling their white stomachs,
loosening their muscles on the net until, resigned,
they let go.