Landscape With Headless Mama

“These are true border poems, restlessly crossing between the real and the surreal, the loved and the used up, the fertile and the infertile, and the hungry and the sated. Jennifer Givhan is a dangerous poet in all the necessary ways.”—Connie Voisine

Landscape with Headless Mama explores the experiences of becoming and being a mother through the lens of dark fairy tales. Describing the book as “a surreal survival guide,” Givhan draws from the southwestern desert, incorporating Latin American fine art and folkloric influences. Drawing inspiration from Gloria Anzaldua, Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington, tattoo artists, and comic book heroes, among other sources, this is a book of intelligence, humor, deep feeling, and, above all, duende.

JENNIFER GIVHAN is a Mexican American poet who grew up in the Imperial Valley in Southern California. She earned her MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College in North Carolina and an MA in English Literature at California State University, Fullerton. Her writing has appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies, including Best New Poets 2013, AGNI, Prairie Schooner, Indiana Review, Rattle, and The Collagist. She was also the recipient of a 2015 NEA individual artist’s grant.