LGBT Book & Video Blog

Debby Reis / Xtra West / Wednesday, May 07, 2008

A personified Death captains a ship "dressed as a dancing girl" while demons turn up in sinks and on bridges — apt visual disturbances to occur during the lives of saints. But Jen Currin's Hagiography doesn't focus on saints' biographies alone.

"I was interested in that idea of a biography that wasn't really a true biography, you know, that was false or elevated in some way, not completely real," she explains.

Hagiography, Currin's second book of poetry, was supposed to be released in 2006 after winning the 2005 Winnow Press Open Book Award. At the time, Currin was elated. Anvil Press had just released her first book, The Sleep of Four Cities, when news arrived that the small American publishing company had accepted Hagiography.

"Unfortunately, like many small presses, it's mostly run by one woman, with a few other people, and she fell sick," Currin recounts. "A year passed and by then I just said, 'You know, I want to break contract because, eventually something's going to happen, but I don't want to keep waiting.'"

Winnow Press allowed Currin to pull Hagiography and by then she was talking with Coach House about her third book. More of POETRY / Jen Currin's poetic fragments