Philomath: Poems

The debut collection by Devon Walker-Figueroa, Philomath, was selected as the winner of the 2020 National Poetry Series and was a finalist for the 2021 John Leonard Prize for Best First Book. It is a ruminative catalog of overgrowth and the places that haunt us, featuring Walker-Figueroa's quiet awe of nature, memory, and beauty. The poet's obligation is to keep an eye on what is left of the people and places that have impacted us, whether it is the smell of burnt grapes, a twelfth-century bronze, or a lock of hair.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 96 pages
Publication date: 30 September 2021
Publisher: Milkweed Editions

Winner of the 2022 Levis Reading Prize, Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle's 2021 John Leonard Prize for Best First Book, and a Publishers Weekly "Top Ten Pick" for Fall 2021 Poetry Titles, this debut collection is a ruminative catalog of overgrowth and the places that haunt us. With Devon Walker-Figueroa as our Virgil, we begin in the collection's eponymous town of Philomath, Oregon, drifting through the general store, into the Nazarene Church, past people plucking at the brambles of a place that won't let them go. We move beyond the town into fields and farmland, and further still, along highways, into a cursed Californian town, a museum in Florence. We wander with a kind of animal logic, like a beast with "a mind to get loose / from a valley fallowing / towards foul," through the tense, overlapping space between movement and stillness.

An explorer at the edge of the sublime, Walker-Figueroa writes in quiet awe of nature, of memory, and of a beauty that is "merely existence carrying on and carrying on." In her wanderings, she guides readers toward a kind of witness that doesn't flinch from the bleak or bizarre: A vineyard engulfed in flames is reclaimed by the fields. A sow smothers its young, then bears more. A neighbor chews locusts in his yard.

For in Philomath, it is the poet's (sometimes reluctant) obligation "to keep an eye / on what is left" of the people and places that have impacted us. And there is always something left, whether it is the smell of burnt grapes, a twelfth-century bronze, or even a lock of hair.

Weight: 182g
Dimension: 216 x 168 x 11 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781571315229