Adrift

by Joanna Grant

In Adrift Joanna Grant comes to terms with “the undamned waves of the past” and the complexities of the globalized present. A specialist in Middle Eastern travel tales, she takes the reader on a tour of perfectly evoked locales, both foreign (Panama, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Kuwait and China) and domestic (rural Georgia and Mississippi). And always, always, whether in her prose poems or taut-lined lyrics, form is not just an integral part of but an active participant in a greater Gestalt. In one brilliant poem, she uses a girdle as a metaphor for both female oppression and poetic lines! Poets can be precise and poets can be playful, but it is exceptional to find so high a degree of both qualities in the same person. With this her debut collection, she establishes herself as a fully developed artist.

-Aaron Poochigian, author of the award-winning American Divine

Backyards on fire, corsets at war, the American South and its history "in search of the frighteners," the centripetal force of Georgia family, "a few rings around the graveyard/ between dinner and bedtime," and the centrifugal power of life overseas; thoughtful prose about Sylvia Plath's biography and her bees and her metabolism, and yet more thoughtful prose about days and nights and years in Bahrain... Here is a trustworthy voice, an intelligent observer, a first book that many among us can, will, should read.


-Stephanie Burt (she/her)
Professor of English
Harvard University
@accommodatingly
Chapbook out For All Mutants :

Adrift is resplendent with memories. Whether describing the marks left by a corset or the scent of dead bodies, Grant makes the ugly things she's witnessed beautiful without compromising their reality. Grant's precise language and her focus on the impermanent urge us to call our mothers and kiss our lovers before they're gone forever.

-Veronica Bennett, Editor-in-Chief of Bullshit Lit

I was introduced to Joanna Grant’s work via her essays which were layered, nuanced, disparate threads woven masterfully into a whole. She has taken to heart Socrates’ dictum, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Looking back with the unsparing eye of Diane Arbus, and with the essayist’s art, she has dovetailed theme and detail, and has distilled into each piece in this collection both meaning and insight. From a deep American South childhood in Georgia to Forward Operating Bases in foreign war zones, Grant’s has been a life not just worth examining, but definitely worth recording, and damned well worth reading about.

-Doc Sigerson, Red Fez Magazine

97 pages, Paperback

Published August 4, 2022

About the author

Dr. Joanna Grant knew from an early age that she would go into teaching. During her college years, she did a lot of tutoring through the English Department's writing lab, and she always enjoyed the interesting, more nontraditional students the most. It was rewarding for her, watching their progress and their increasing self-confidence.

Dr. Grant received her PhD and MA in English from the University of Rochester, her MPhil in Philosophy from Oxford University, Jesus College, and her BA in English from Berry College. Since joining UMGC in 2010 she has taught at sites for UMGC Asia, from Japan to Korea, and throughout the Middle East with UMGC Europe, from Manama to most recently, Kuwait.

In her fourteen years with UMGC, Dr. Grant has gotten to know many, many more intelligent and driven military students and helped them to achieve their goals. She especially enjoys teaching Mythology classes, with their combined emphases on history, myth and folklore, and creative writing. Dr. Grant is also a widely published poet and creative nonfiction writer. Her most recent poetry collection is Adrift from Alien Buddha Press.