Riddle Field: Poems(Test Site Poetry Series)

Winner of the 2019 Interim Test Site Poetry Series Prize The beautifully crafted poems in Riddle Field explore two parallel themes, the impact of the impending destruction of a dam on a small town and the trauma of sexual abuse and eventual recovery from it. This work focuses on the environment, human and physical, in which the loss of nature and innocence is born and calls attention to the many ways we create both intimacy and distance when trauma is hidden or denied. Derek Thomas Dew's language is harsh, honest, and sometimes heartbreaking. His poems capture the confusion and fatigue that must be navigated for a victim of abuse to piece himself back together and the internal strife that comes with carry-ing a traumatic secret that can no longer be ignored.  Rich with unforgettable images and the quiet strength of hard-won survival, Riddle Field tackles the complex process of achieving self-awareness and recovery in the wake of profound trauma.

Table of Contents:
Part I. Town in the Radio Mainland Far From Walter Wet Down Old Carver Confluence Yellow Corner The Nameless Winchuck Part II. I'm Walter Baby Prince Articles He Ring Grin Burnt Little Bread Last November's Burn The Mermaid Club Soft Thieves Blue Masking Tape Part III. Gambit Big Drown Inosculation Short Leg Border Huts 37 Low Bite 38 From Trains 39 My Helicopters 40 Light Us Down     41 That Clapping 42 Cat Root 43 Ring Up Dawn Part IV. Griddle Six Liar's Dice Tunnel Music Watchcoat Ducksing Placeholder Trouble Knuckle Elkstone The Allowance Cairn Topples Cake Part V. Between Churches Land That Knows Hands Cursorial Reliquary 1 Reliquary 2 Reliquary 3 Reliquary 4 Very Afterward Notes

About the Author :
Derek Thomas Dew poems have appeared in Interim, Twyckenham Notes, The Maynard, The Curator, Two Hawks Quarterly, and Hawaii Pacific Review. He lives in Oregon.

Review :
"The collection cultivates and sustains an aura of inventive possibility. Dew is an exciting and complex new voice in contemporary poetry." --Publisher's Weekly "Riddle Field is replete with lines that fuse unlike dimensions, relentlessly juxtaposing realms and ideas that create a new kind of knowing. Here, collage and stream of consciousness reveal the interconnectedness inherent in all things. Each line: a deep noticing that can only be chanced upon, relentless and sublime." --Sherwin Bitsui, author of Dissolve and Flood Song "In Riddle Field we are made witness to a miracle of the new millennium: America rising out of its actual soil, covered in flowers and malice, music and weaponry, into a body wholly new. These poems propose a spaciousness in what Shakespeare once called "the wide gap of time". They refresh and reprimand us all at once." --Donald Revell, author of The English Boat and Drought-Adapted Vine