poetry
archive of published poetry organized by year / video clips of past performances and poetry readings / selection of online interviews and media mentions
p u b l i s h e d p o e t r y :
Author Q&A: The Offing interview
“I wanted to write poems in which St. Louis took St. Louis back for itself and wrote to itself, about itself. Poems that not only looked directly back at the camera but maybe had the audacity to block the lens itself with a mirror in a kind of self-referential defiance. Because in reality there was an interiority to the protests that was entirely imperceivable to the outside gaze. I wanted to privilege that interiority over any other vantage point.”
In searing poetry, Jacqui Germain revisits Ferguson protests in ‘Bittering the Wound’: St. Louis Public Radio interview
Bittering the Wound challenges the way we discuss, write about, and document political unrest. It offers fresh language and perspective on a historic period that reverberated around the world. Germain takes the reader through poems that depict a range of scenes—from mid-protest to post-protest—and personifies St. Louis with a keen and loving eye.
Jacqui Germain vs. Specificity: VS Podcast interview
The VS podcast is a bi-weekly series where poets confront the ideas that move them. Hosts Ajanaé Dawkins and Brittany Rogers interview Jacqui Germain about her debut collection, Bittering the Wound, while discussing St. Louis as a persona, the intimacy of specificity, and the necessary role of contradictions in everyday life.
““In these poems, the most unkillable thing seems to be the voice of dissent, which is sharp-tongued and resolute...With ‘When the Ghosts Come Ashore,’ Jacqui Germain presents speakers haunted by American violence and speakers who haunt back, alongside the quiet vibrant solace held in the will to ‘still / open wide for the sun.’””
(2023)
The St. Louisan / Self-Portrait Framed in Life Between Protests (reprint) / The Streetlights Christened Us Saved (Or At Least Salvageable) (reprint) / Brick-Made and Steady (reprint)
(2022)
The Offing / American Fear: Director’s Cut
(2021)
Grub Street Lit Mag / Self-Portrait Framed in Life Between Protests / Ghost Revival / Self-Portrait Standing in A Field of Text Messages, All Sent and Blooming Unanswered (print only)
The Minnesota Review / A List of Items Recovered From Protesters / For the Street That Held Us
Green Mountains Review / Dripping Villanelle for the Burned Walgreens, QuikTrip, Prime Beauty, et al. (print only)
Poem-A-Day / Still Unbuttoned & Unbothered: On Imagining That Freedom Probably Feels Like Getting the Itis
(2020)
The Rumpus / Forgiving the Fire for All the Nights It Burned / What for the black girls— / Ulcer (with footnotes)
2020 James H. Nash Poetry Prize, selected by Ilya Kaminsky / After a Nightmare
The Pulitzer Arts Foundation (Together/Apart: 100 Boots Poetry Series) / be water-bridge / we be water
River Styx Magazine / By the Grace of the Gaze (print only)
(2019)
Bettering American Poetry, Volume 3 / The Harvest (reprint; print only)
Tinderbox Poetry / How to Make South Grand a Ghost Town
Anomaly / What is Known as Paranoia or Maladjusted Self-Defense / We Called it a ‘War’ Because It Was Useful or Alternate Names for Teargas / Flatland
(2018)
The End of Chiraq: A Literary Mixtape / How America Loves Chicago’s Ghosts More Than the People Still Living in the City (reprint; print only)
ALIVE Magazine / Before the bombs & the fallout
(2017)
Underblong Journal / All Ash, Anointing
Blueshift Journal / The Harvest / A Series of Proofs, Explained
(2016)
The Offing / Blood
Construction Lit / Questions for the Woman I Was Last Night, 2
Best of the Net Anthology (2015) / Conjuring: A Lesson in Words and Ghosts (reprint)
(2015)
Muzzle Magazine / How America Loves Chicago’s Ghosts More Than the People Still Living in the City
Drunk in a Midnight Choir / The Night a Cop Shoved Don Lemon / Sankofa / On the Chemical Properties & Uses of Dried Blood
Connotation Press / Questions for the Woman I Was Last Night, 1 / Questions for the Woman I Was Last Night, 3
(2014)
Muzzle Magazine / Conjuring: A Lesson in Words and Ghosts
Anti- / How the atlantic ocean prepares for war (not viewable)
(2013)
Word Riot / Quentin Tarantino
““Throughout the horrors of this work, Germain is able to confront authority and ask the difficult and bitter questions...In this confrontation she requires of her reader discomfort and unease—no answers at hand, only more questions.””
““I love this poet’s ability to perform what Shklovsky once called ‘ostranenie’ or ‘estrangement’: when one looks in the mirror of self and sees one of many things, still alive, on earth… It is frightening, this poem, because it is beautiful.””
““The poems in Jacqui Germain’s ‘When the Ghosts Come Ashore’ are the cross-section of a body mid-escape. Placelessness is the place, leaving only the unsafety of flesh as a hideout. Black presences break from the margins and pierce through these hard lyrics...Germain has made of her craft an exorcism: ‘Let my anger be the celebration we were never / supposed to have.’ Let it. Let it.””
m e d i a :
The Offing / Q&A with Jacqui Germain, author of Bittering the Wound
VS Podcast / Jacqui Germain vs. Specificity
St. Louis Public Radio / In searing poetry, Jacqui Germain revisits Ferguson protests in ‘Bittering the Wound’
Voices of Bettering American Poetry, Volume 3 / Interview
Ploughshares Journal at Emerson College / Poet Activist Spotlight: Jacqui Germain
Huffington Post / 34 Poets of Color Summarize 2017 in Verse (#19)
Blueshift Journal / March 2017 feature poet + interview
Huffington Post / 20 Young Writers of Color Share Their Favorite Poems (#6)
Small Press Distribution 2016 Staff Picks / chapbook review by Janice Worthen
Cannonball Read / chapbook review
St. Louis Public Radio / St. Louis-based writer Jacqui Germain on her poetry and the changing narrative of resistance
