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Sugar Factory
“Sugar Factory is absolutely gorgeous lyric fire.” – Ilya Kaminsky
“These poems make me so glad. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a charming use of the exclamation point. And there is such a vastness to these little poems — the way Joanne Kyger or Larry Eigner were able to write like brushstrokes — Emily Wallis Hughes lives fully, sensually in the natural world, in the city, and in a family’s past. You will feel so at home in these poems; they are a tonic.” – Matthew Rohrer
“Like Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” Hughes’s Sugar Factory is a laud for the land, a deep song of praise for the ecstasy in the ordinary. Riding the train, peeling fruit, contemplating streaks of color—here we find everyday encounters opening doorways to memory, both intimate and ancestral. The result is a quietly fierce collection of poems that spans coasts and continents as it boldly “carries the voices of the living/and the dead.”’ – Patricia Killelea
Emily Wallis Hughes’s first collection of poems, Sugar Factory, including a series of twelve new acrylic paintings by Sarah Riggs in collaboration with Emily’s poetry, and a co-written essay in two colors by the poet and artist about their collaboration, was published in January 2019 by legendary small press Spuyten Duyvil. Sugar Factory was a finalist for both the Fence Modern Poets Series Prize and the Tupelo Press Dorset Prize.
“These poems make me so glad. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a charming use of the exclamation point. And there is such a vastness to these little poems — the way Joanne Kyger or Larry Eigner were able to write like brushstrokes — Emily Wallis Hughes lives fully, sensually in the natural world, in the city, and in a family’s past. You will feel so at home in these poems; they are a tonic.” – Matthew Rohrer
“Like Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” Hughes’s Sugar Factory is a laud for the land, a deep song of praise for the ecstasy in the ordinary. Riding the train, peeling fruit, contemplating streaks of color—here we find everyday encounters opening doorways to memory, both intimate and ancestral. The result is a quietly fierce collection of poems that spans coasts and continents as it boldly “carries the voices of the living/and the dead.”’ – Patricia Killelea
Emily Wallis Hughes’s first collection of poems, Sugar Factory, including a series of twelve new acrylic paintings by Sarah Riggs in collaboration with Emily’s poetry, and a co-written essay in two colors by the poet and artist about their collaboration, was published in January 2019 by legendary small press Spuyten Duyvil. Sugar Factory was a finalist for both the Fence Modern Poets Series Prize and the Tupelo Press Dorset Prize.
116 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2019
About the author
Emily Wallis Hughes
3 books3 followersEmily Wallis Hughes is a poet and editor who grew up in Agua Caliente, California, a small town in the Sonoma Valley. Sugar Factory, her first full-length book of poems, containing a series of twelve new paintings by Sarah Riggs in collaboration with Emily’s poetry, was published in January 2019 by Spuyten Duyvil. Sugar Factory was a finalist for both the Fence Modern Poets Series Prize and the Tupelo Press Dorset Prize. Emily co-edited Slovene avant-garde poet Jure Detela’s Moss & Silver, translated by Raymond Miller with Tatjana Jamnik (Ugly Duckling Presse). Her poems have been published in Always Crashing, Berkeley Poetry Review, Blazing Stadium, Cordella, Conduit, Elderly, Gigantic Magazine, Luna Luna, Painted Bride Quarterly, Prelude, Suisun Valley Review, Trampoline, A Women’s Thing, ZAUM, and many other literary journals.
Editorial Co-Director of Fence, Emily founded and edits Elecment [creative-critical engagements with poetry and poetry-adjacent arts], co-edits The Constant Critic, and collaboratively leads Fence with Jason Zuzga.
Emily earned a BA in English literature and an MA in creative writing and English literature from the University of California, Davis. After living in Berkeley while teaching swimming at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, she taught English composition and literature at two community colleges: American River College and Cosumnes River College in Sacramento, California until 2014. She earned her MFA in Poetry at New York University, where she was a Writers in the Public Schools Fellow, working for the Teachers and Writers Collaborative in partnership with the NYU Creative Writing Program. Emily has been teaching undergraduate creative writing courses at Rutgers–New Brunswick since 2016 as a Part Time Lecturer. In addition to Rutgers, she has taught creative writing classes and poetry workshops at New York University, the University of California, Davis, and with Brooklyn Poets. She lives in Astoria, New York.
Editorial Co-Director of Fence, Emily founded and edits Elecment [creative-critical engagements with poetry and poetry-adjacent arts], co-edits The Constant Critic, and collaboratively leads Fence with Jason Zuzga.
Emily earned a BA in English literature and an MA in creative writing and English literature from the University of California, Davis. After living in Berkeley while teaching swimming at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, she taught English composition and literature at two community colleges: American River College and Cosumnes River College in Sacramento, California until 2014. She earned her MFA in Poetry at New York University, where she was a Writers in the Public Schools Fellow, working for the Teachers and Writers Collaborative in partnership with the NYU Creative Writing Program. Emily has been teaching undergraduate creative writing courses at Rutgers–New Brunswick since 2016 as a Part Time Lecturer. In addition to Rutgers, she has taught creative writing classes and poetry workshops at New York University, the University of California, Davis, and with Brooklyn Poets. She lives in Astoria, New York.
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February 16, 2019
In this collaborative project, the scouring, flourishing writing of Emily Wallis Hughes meets the elastic, chromo-spastic paintings of Sarah Riggs. The work follows biographies of home, soul, womanhood, and the daunting arguments of history while flashing positivity and optimism a la a most surreal humor. It's a splash, this book, and one that sits well (contentedly) from cover to cover.
Displaying 1 of 1 review