Fig
by Emily Wall
$15.00
Fig is part of a chapbook trilogy written in the wake of the 2016 election. Encapsulating the voices of three powerful women: Mary, mother of Jesus; Georgia O’Keeffe, artist and feminist pioneer; and Alice Waters, chef and food activist. Through persona poems, each book seeks to speak to and lift up women, who are living with trauma and fear, in this current political climate.
Available October 30, 2023
The persona poems in FIG come to us in the voice of chef and food activist Alice Waters. In these poems, Waters offers us advice and encouragement: how to eat, how to take care of our bodies, and how to feed our communities. Waters, whose early life was shaped by the social justice protests in Berkeley, is responsible for changing the way we eat in America. She started a restaurant that introduced farm-to-table eating to Americans. She brought us wood-fired pizzas, and is at the center of the Slow Food Movement in the U.S. Along with Michelle Obama, she has launched the reform movement for school lunches. And yet even today she walks in her restaurant tasting, moving a fork, lighting a lamp, and striving to create the perfect meal for those who come to Chez Panisse. To reflect her deep care and precision as a chef, each of the poems in this book is written in a poetic form.
Emily Wall is a poet and Professor of English at the University of Alaska. She has five books of poetry: Fist and Flame are chapbooks published by Minerva Rising Press. Liveaboard and Freshly Rooted have found homes in Salmon Poetry. Breaking Into Air: Birth Poems is published by Red Hen Press. Her newest book, Fig, is forthcoming from Minerva Rising.
