p r a t h n a l o r
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Finalist for the 2023 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry
Finalist for the 2022 A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry Emanations (Wolsak & Wynn, 2022) is a meditation on the spirit of disaster, both personal and collective. Pushing always against commodification, against a consumable narrative, Prathna Lor charts the depths of the self, searching for an internal music. With a lyric style that emerges from the ruins of unwanted life, Prathna Lor has created a debut collection that is radiant to touch. "In the luminous pages of Emanations we encounter nothing less than a radical philosophy of being: ‘I never emerge / seeking only insurgence / a moment of recovery / to listen extraordinarily.’ The language here is insistently embodied yet metaphysical – affective, conceptual and inspiringly bold in both directness and vulnerability: ‘If whatever can be said is eruption, let me speak / plainly.’ Prathna Lor has gifted us with a vital book for our time, a needful summons to life and possibility ever abounding: ‘What will it take for you to know that it’s enough / To wander into marvels.’" – David Chariandy, author of Soucouyant and Brother "These poems conduct language in the manner of electricity passing through the body. Emanations is a compassionate transmission of mutating reverence and alienation for this life. Prathna Lor allows us to receive ‘untouchable slumbering / beneath the creak.’ Here is delight, terror and peace. Wander in and receive them.” – Lee Suksi, author of The Nerves "Emanations is a book of philosophical intensities, sonic incantation, and lyric derivations that refuse easy categories of value, meaning, and identity. Nonetheless, Lor’s language evokes a palpable sense of emergent modes of being and connectivity to others. These are writings of sensual and sonic embodiment entwined in a critical (and crucial) poetics of consciousness and self-becoming within our shared circumstance of global wreckage." – Carla Harryman, author of A Voice to Perform: One Opera / Two Plays |