Porter Square Books is delighted to welcome local poets Christie Towers and Aly Pierce for a reading at the store! Both will be reading from their celestial debut collections, which you an learn more about below. This event will take place on Thursday, July 27 at 7:00pm.
Please note that masks will be required for all those attending the event. RSVPs, while not required, are strongly encouraged!
"Somehow she’s devised a language that goes right through the conceptual scaffolding of Hildegard’s visions and into the elemental current beneath: pure image, pure sensation." - James Parker, The Atlantic
Says Lillian-Yvonne Bertram of the collection, "Is it the divine, earthly desire, or both commingling? Through sinuous lyrical syntax that interweaves Hildegard's own words and a 13th century manual for female anchoresses, Towers grows a nuanced investigation of the ecstatic, a burning inquiry into how the sacred can be heard in all of us, and a call to pour out thy heart like water."
Christie Towers is a poet (and long-time friend of PSB!) living in Somerville, MA. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Massachusetts, Boston and is currently pursuing her M.Div at Boston University's School of Theology. She serves on the pastoral care team for MANNA, a community of unhoused and unstably housed individuals, in downtown Boston. And Again I Heard the Stars is her first collection of poems.
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"The poems here are fresh lenses that allow the reader to follow Pierce as she seeks to make sense of the world, then enriches it with an awareness of its beauty and surreality.” - Jill McDonough, author of Here All Night
The Visible Planets is a celebration and a eulogy of galactic proportions. Simultaneously an exploration of universal joy and the mourning of a lost sister, Aly Pierce's The Visible Planets is a reminder of all the beauty in this fleeting life. Utilizing the cosmos and its celestial bodies, Pierce exposes the juxtaposing starlight and black holes inherent in every human. Along the way, the reader meets a colorful cast of characters (including Jupiter, Neptune, Mars, and Phobos) who each have their own flaws, insecurities, and desires, as do all bodies in this universe. The Visible Planets requests that the reader love as deeply as they can while they have the time and space because eventually every star must fade no matter how bright it is.
Aly Pierce lives in Beverly, MA where she drinks coffee & mails you records from Deathwish Inc. Her debut collection of poetry The Visible Planets (Game Over Books) and chapbook Cryptids (split with Cassandra de Alba, Ginger Bug Press) both came out in 2020. She has also been published in the Oyez Review, Tenderness Lit, Butter Press & others. You can find her online as @instantweekend and at alypierce.com