Midden

"Midden, by Julia Bouwsma, investigates a site of historic violence: Malaga Island, Maine, a mixed-race fishing community that was destroyed and disbanded by devastating state violence. Shuttling between the early 20th century and the cabin in Maine where Bouwsma now lives and farms, the poems summon and live with their ghosts with enormous, deliberate tenderness. “All winter, I tried to write the island/ to life, labored// these voices, the people torn/ up” she writes, before adding “all winter, the beaver hung in my shed,/ her body frozen and still, / upside down in the dark.”"