ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Willa Carroll is a writer and interdisciplinary artist. Her debut full-length poetry collection, Nerve Chorus (The Word Works), was noted in The Common as a “meticulously choreographed treatment of life as art.” Carroll’s poems have appeared in AGNI, Poem-A-Day, Tin House, The Slowdown, and elsewhere. A finalist for The Georgia Poetry Prize and the Tomaž Šalamun Prize, she won Narrative Magazine’s Third Annual Poetry Contest and Tupelo Quarterly’s TQ7 Poetry Prize, judged by Brenda Hillman. Her poetry videos and multimedia collaborations have been featured in Interim Poetics, Narrative Outloud, and TriQuarterly. Awarded Best Poetry Film at the International Migration and Environment Film Festival, her work has screened at festivals in the US, Canada, UK, and Denmark. After earning degrees from Bennington and living in NYC for twenty-five years, she’s now based in upstate New York. willacarroll.com

PRAISE for DEMOLITION SUITE

The charged lyrics and sonic acrobatics of Carroll’s mesmerizing Demolition Suite grieve and celebrate, haunt and excite. How can anyone read these thrilling, sonorous poems and remain unmoved? Here, we are witness to the vast, capacious body. Carroll is a nimble poet who transforms us with the force of her wondrous and devastating lines. This riveting collection proves a vital addition to our conversation around urgent ecological concerns. Call these poems a warning. Call them a prophecy. Demolition Suite compels us to sing its fierce hymns.

— Albert Abonado, author of JAW

Demolition Suite gives us the music; the movement; the body; the sexual body; the body compromised; the body demolished; the land, the water, compromised or demolished; the father, gone. It’s not difficult to see the connections, thanks to Carroll’s skillful, surprising use of structure, wit, and inventive, precise language. Brava on this stunning collection.

—Estha Weiner, author of at the last minute 

Intensely lyrical, emotionally expansive, and intellectually epigrammatic, Carroll tackles the science of the body, the body politic, and climate crisis with controlled abandon. This is a lexical call-to-arms like a “father’s hammer [that] | craters the walls” around you. Get ready to “Rattle the chain of custody” between her interior and exterior sensory realms. “I’m not your biddable animal,” she declares, placing her “ear to the wall | of your chest | for the flesh drum” to hear the orchestral scores for the millennium’s self-destruction. Rich, inventive, and wholly compelling, this “exit music” makes for a terrible beauty––I’m still savoring “all the sweet debris | every last bird” this powerful book has to offer.

—Elena Karina Byrne, author of If This Makes You Nervous