On Certainty

Description

Lyrical poems that tell the story of a nameless woman navigating a technological dystopia.  
In the poems of On Certainty, an unnamed woman in a strangely familiar dystopia narrates a story of power and decline, where the Tyrant has gained ascendency and the Philosopher is dying. Here, the Tyrant rules over a decimated ecology filled with android deer, burnt towns, and exhausted individuals dependent on virtual reality augmentation. In choosing whether to take the Philosopher’s place in a struggle against the Tyrant, the narrator must consider how her decision may perpetuate the currently existing catastrophic systems.
 
Weaving together speculative fiction, philosophical aphorism, lyric fragment, and documentary technique, On Certainty echoes the contemporary world that can feel simultaneously quotidian and strange. Karla Kelsey’s poetry books include Blood Feather; A Conjoined Book, also published by Omnidawn; Iteration Nets; and Knowledge, Forms, the Aviary, selected by Carolyn Forché for the Sawtooth Poetry Prize. Her book of experimental essays, Of Sphere, was selected by Carla Harryman for the 2016 Essay Press Prize. With Aaron McCollough, she copublishes SplitLevel Texts, a press specializing in hybrid genre projects.

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