Palette Chapbook Launch Party—HABITUAL PRAYER by Ava Chen
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Please join us for the Palette Chapbook Launch Party!
TUESDAY, December 3, 2024, 6 PM EST / 3 PM PST
We invite you to celebrate Ava Chen, the winner of Palette Poetry's 2023 Chapbook Prize! Her chapbook, Habitual Prayer, was chosen by Danez Smith. Here is what they had to say about the collection:
Habitual Prayer seems like a fitting and off title all at once. Sure, these poems indeed are imbued with all power, intention, mystery, and beauty of prayer, but nothing is habitual, routine, or ordinary about how this poet approaches language. In a collection where “too many dahlias/grow taller than angels” where the speaker proclaims “I expect blood/when I crack open the softening door—,” again and again in this brief but stunning collection I found myself tripping over language so fresh and wise, at times ancient and at times from from electric dreamy future, making new all the places we poets have looked to find out work: into death, into the garden, towards love, and into the mirror. Habitual Prayer has made me a fan of this poet’s magic, how they transfigure language into these precise, lush spells and invocations that unsettle me so. The greedy prayer I cast out to my gods: please, please, more of this, more from this poet.
Following this launch, readers can download the whole chapbook for free on Palette Poetry.
This event will be moderated by Palette's Editor-in-Chief, Marcella Haddad, and will be held virtually over Zoom. Please fill out the submission form to obtain an email link to the event.