How We Came Upon the Colony

by Ross White

“This is one of the most substantial chapbooks I’ve ever read. In only seventeen poems, Ross White guides his readers to a colony of the imagination—a world of vivid and coolly unsettling words—that is timeless yet contemporary, specific in detail yet mysterious in design, paradisiacal yet troubled. He is a poet of great intelligence and wit and precision, and he commands an impressive range of forms and modes while sustaining a lucid unity of tone and voice. How We Came Upon the Colony is a powerful, darkly funny, refreshingly un-self-centered, humane, and deeply satisfying work from one of our very best young writers and editors.” —Michael McFee, author of That Was Oasis and The Smallest Talk

Genres: Poetry

24 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2014

About the author

Ross White is the author of Charm Offensive, winner of the Sexton Prize for Poetry, and three chapbooks, Valley of Want, How We Came Upon the Colony and The Polite Society. He is the director of Bull City Press, an independent publisher of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, where he hosts The Chapbook, a podcast devoted to chapbooks. He teaches creative writing, podcasting, publishing, and grammar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, Poetry Daily, Tin House, and The Southern Review, among others. With Matthew Olzmann, he edited Another & Another: An Anthology from the Grind Daily Writing Series. He also has a boutique design firm, Spock & Associates, and a weekly trivia show and podcast, Trivia Escape Pod. Follow him on Mastodon: @rosswhite@bullcity.space