Allison Blevins, Author of Where Will We Live If the House Burns Down? Interviewed by Melissa Joplin Higley MJH – When and why did you first start writing poems? AB – I started writing poems after reading Teen Magazine as a girl (not a teen). The magazine had a poetry page in the back, and I loved the drama. My mother bought me a journal, and I filled and filled the pages. I still write much of my work in the same way now. MJH – Who are your main poetic influences? AB – I worked with…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Review by Mary Makofske From the title poem, “At the Redemption Center,” where the prosaic recycling of bottles and cans slides into “hope…for the redemption of us all,” Anne Sandor demonstrates her skill at turning words and situations over to examine their various facets. Moving easily through family relationships, gender norms, and the inner lives of children and adults, this debut poetry collection also brings precise language and empathy to examine public events. Sandor, more a poet of the “eye” than the “I,” prefers to fade into the background as she lets images, metaphors, and events speak for themselves.…
Review by Mindy Kronenberg The memoir has become a prominent and innovative literary genre, evolving from conventional prose to graphic and poetic forms, providing poignant and entertaining forays into the lives of authors with complex personal journeys (100 Demons, by Lynda Barry), even moving from illustrated page to stage as a musical experience (FUN Home, A Family Tragicomic, by Alison Bechdel). Nin Andrews, an acknowledged practitioner of the prose poem, has created an inventive and endearing series of episodes that comprise her childhood and coming of age, and introduces us to the eccentric dramatis personae of her challenging and…
Review by Megha Sood Pramila Venkateswaran, Poet Laureate Emerita of Suffolk County and author of multiple poetry collections, brings forth her latest poetry collection of fifty-one poems, Exile is Not a Foreign Word, which introspects the walls—both figuratively and metaphorically—that are divisive in nature in terms of religion, caste, color, creed, and make us poor in more ways than one. Her deep meditation on issues plaguing the world, along with brilliant life introspection through poetry, gives birth to this riveting collection. She delves into the social issues as she ruminates on the damage done by divisive rhetoric, injustice, and…
Curated by Melissa Joplin Higley New & notable, recent & forthcoming. Books are listed in order of publication date. Laurel Benjamin, Flowers on a Train, Sheila-Na-Gig, June 2025, poetry Flowers on a Train traverses a natural world both real and imagined, where we hunger for something beyond the boundaries of loss. Rich in crisp, lush imagery and filled with family, food, art, and music, the poems take us to local and far away places. Walking the neighborhood before surgery, we encounter a talking tree, hiking in a Sierra storm, the skies appear as a white bird, and listening to a…
MER announces its nomination of the following works for Pushcart Prize: Poetry Jennifer Barber – “Berlin” Rocío Franco – “My Daughter Wills Me Into Remission” Madeleine Mysko – “The Summer He Left” Carla Panciera – “In This Dream” Fiction Alyssa Cami, “Mother Tongue” Non-Fiction Helen Raica-Klotz, “All I’ve Got is a Photograph” All were originally published in MER – Mom Egg Review Vol. 23 (April 2025). Congratulations and good luck to the nominees!
Review by Rebecca Jane Count On Me untangles knotted emotions, traumas, and stories that connect grandmothers, mothers, and daughters. On its surface, this realistic novel, set during the 2010s in Canada, tells the story of a single mother, Tia Pysar, who struggles alone to raise her young daughter at the same time her aging parents need, yet also push away, Tia’s assistance. Her daughter wakes to nurse every night, throws tantrums against in the car seat, and proves slower than other kids in learning to dress herself. While Tia attempts to give this daughter a more loving childhood than…
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Brenda Cárdenas WHAT A MOLCAJETE HOLDS Despite my drawers full of knives and spoons, cutting boards, spatulas, ceramic ramekins, when I blend spices, I must place them in her molcajete, press the three-generation pestle against cloves to shatter them, grind cominos y ajo in the same circular motion as the tides that softened stones fused to form its mortar. I fold my right hand over hers and hers and hers, their wrinkles a reminder that the skin is now loosening from my carpal bones, every piece of me pulled toward Earth. Although she stands behind me, and another…
Marjorie Maddox On Writing Seeing Things Of all my books, the newest—Seeing Things (Wildhouse, February 2025)—proved the most difficult to write, but also one of the most important. The reason is because of you, dear reader. To better understand ourselves and others, poetry creates experiences. It helps us discover connections between strangers and uncover insight and understanding where we thought there were none. Through specific images and scenes, it says, this is my grief, joy, or hope. Is it yours as well? The poems in Seeing Things record fear, vulnerability, and joy—both from the perspective of caregivers and from…