Nina Lindsay
(Photo by Aya Brackett)
Nina Lindsay
Nina Lindsay’s work has appeared in the Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Poetry International, the Colorado Review, Fence, Rattle, and many other journals, and has been awarded the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize. Nina also writes children’s literary criticism and reviews for Kirkus, The Horn Book Magazine, School Library Journal, and others. She grew up in Oakland, California, where she lives today, and works for the Oakland Public Library.
Because
Nina Lindsay’s Because is beautiful work. The poems pick through the things of the world, her world, exposing the unseen and intensifying the seen. They question what she calls “our multifrond uncertainties and errors” and “hesitant happiness.” She negotiates with great poise the push-pull of darkness and light, presence and absence, waking consciousness and the dream life. The familiar becomes, in her telling, unfamiliar and fraught. “February’s dust is rapturous,” she says. The poems, too, even in their melancholies, are rapturous.” –W. S. Di Piero
“Altogether these are quiet but complex poems that wade through the inchoate existential questions that inform day-to-day life in the neighborhood and home, written with a playful and approachable sensibility that surprises in the gentlest of ways” —Ryo Yamaguchi, New Pages, June 2, 2016
Because is reviewed in the July 2016 issue of Midwest Book Review.
Today’s Special Dish
“I can’t remember when I’ve read a more delicious group of poems than Nina Lindsay’s Today’s Special Dish. This book is pure, stunning pleasure. The fragrances and sparks of flavor—endearing scenes and revelations—surprise with whimsy, turning and twisting on the tongue in hypnotic ways. I felt my whole palate perk up, like when you want to call all your friends and tell them about that fresh mango/sticky rice superlative dessert you just ate at the new Thai cafe. Meet me there! Read this book!” —Naomi Shihab Nye, author of You and Yours
Nina’s poem “My Bare Feet” from Because will be featured on Poetry Daily on Thursday, August 4, 2016.
Nina Lindsay’s work is part of the DISRUPTUS show at Vessel Gallery (471 25th Street in Oakland) through August 27, 2016.
Because is reviewed in the July 2016 issue of the Midwest Book Review.
Read a review of Because in New Pages, June 2, 2016.
Because was #19 on Small Press Distribution’s Poetry Bestsellers for June 2016.
Read Nina’s poems in Issue Two of KYSO Flash.
Read Nina’s poem, “The Two Worlds,” in Blue Fifth Review.
Read Nina’s flash poem “Four years left on earth” in Mudlark.
Read Nina’s poems posted online October 17, 2011 in BLIP magazine.
Read about Nina Lindsay and Helen Wickes in the April 20, 2007 issue of the Contra Costa Times.