A GODLESS ASCENDS
Trish Hopkinson

ISBN 978-1946-583-321
72pp / paperback
Forthcoming March 2024

A GODLESS ASCENDS is the powerful new collection of poems by Trish Hopkinson. In this intensely personal collection, the poet’s close attention to language propels the narrative and brings its scenes to life: I see her mother writing essays in college; I see the poet telling her daughter, do not mistake urgency for love; I see her watching over her injured son in his hospital bed. These poems produce an aura of the mystical nature of making a family and keeping it together while remaining true to the poet’s creative life.

Praise for A Godless Ascends:

“Like the screech owl, Trish Hopkinson’s work hardens itself in order to keep its insides soft. There’s a Plathian urgency to these poems, reminding us that memory has taste buds, ancestry is complicated and life, like poetry, is grounded in physicality.”

                                                                         –Wendy Videlock, author of Wise to the West

"A Godless Ascends offers such a visceral reading experience, full of line breaks that turn surprising corners to reveal vivid scenes and the messy realities of life as a young daughter, intense adolescent, wife, and then mother to children who will grow up and move out as well. In the first “She-God” poem, the speaker says, “she is / a whole being godless / —she birthed two / no three— / if she chooses to / count herself / & she does.” And Trish Hopkinson does a brilliant job of counting herself and her family in these autobiographical poems. I can’t wait to share this book and read it again myself!"

                                                                          –Katie Manning, editor-in-chief of Whale Road Review

“Think how loss pulls language from us until / it swallows everything,” says the speaker in Trish Hopkinson’s first full-length collection. If there’s no script for loss, and no script for motherhood—and if childhood is “a tattoo installed by a convict on the back of [my] neck”—then these poems provide a provocative blueprint that outline the speaker’s most epiphanic experiences (whether happy or harrowing). The speaker discards what doesn’t suit and takes stock of what remains: a martyred dragonfly (as mother), children with names like poems, a praying screech owl, a softened pomegranate. “I leave the blood nest: ancestry does not warrant, / association does not bind, me to breast // or covert—sparrows tumble from my throat,  / let loose, flutter around the room... I clasp / my jaw and refuse to let them // back in…—not even a sparrow / falls to the ground.” Hopkinson resurrects some of our deepest convictions about what in life is worth celebrating in this collection that  ends—quite literally—in a miracle.”

                                                                        –Ellen Elder, Co-Poetry Editor for Literary Mama

Reviews:

A Review in MER by Dayna Patterson: https://merliterary.com/2024/03/06/a-godless-ascends-by-trish-hopkinson/

Trish Hopkinson is a poet and literary arts advocate and can be found online at SelfishPoet.com. She is a co-founder and the director of Rock Canyon Poets, a regional poetry group with over 50 members, annual members retreat, and two anthologies published annually from 2014 - 2020: Orogeny, a collection of Rock Canyon Poets work; and Inspired, a collection from the community poetry writing workshop she taught with support from Utah Humanities. She co-founded Provo Poetry in 2015 to feature Utah poets in Poemball vending machines with three permanent locations in Provo and Salt Lake City. Provo Poetry and Rock Canyon Poets have been featured on KSL, KRCL, 15 Bytes, Slug Magazine, The Daily Herald, and City Weekly among others. In addition, Hopkinson is a board member of the International Women’s Writing Guild. Her poetry has been published in Sugar House Review, TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics, Cultural Daily, and The Penn Review. Her third chapbook Footnote was published by Lithic Press in 2017, and her fourth e-chapbook Almost Famous was published by Yavanika Press in 2019. Hopkinson lives in western Colorado and happily answers to labels such as atheist, feminist, and empty nester; and enjoys traveling, live music, wine tasting, and craft beer.

trishhopkinson.com