We鈥檙e delighted to share that Paula Bohince and Aaron Fagan will be the 2025 91桃色 Series of Contemporary Poets authors. Their work was selected by series editor Rowan Ricardo Phillips, from among 290 submissions.
叠辞丑颈苍肠别鈥檚 A Violence, her fourth published collection, is a poetic representation of PTSD and its evocative bewilderments, written at inflection points: a waking from dissociation borne from a harrowing childhood; a breakdown; and a struggle toward wholeness by means of mystified recollection amid ecological disturbances. Bohince is here alert readers to surprise, the enthralling image 鈥渞ushing through such wreckage a brain becomes.鈥� Contemplating vulnerability and resilience in the entwined human and natural worlds, with a voice precise and powerful, A Violence builds symphonically to recover a self 鈥済one away,鈥� where the ordinary is imbued with transcendental significance.
In reviewing the collection, Phillips described 叠辞丑颈苍肠别鈥檚 poems as 鈥渂oth introspective and encompassing,鈥� with 鈥渆ach...constructing a distinct atmosphere that reflects the natural world鈥檚 beauty and decay as a mirror for human experience鈥� and raved that her 鈥渃apacity to transform familiar imagery into profound statements and allow her metaphors to unfold, revealing layers that reward close reading, is remarkable.鈥�
Aaron Fagan鈥檚 Atom and Void, which will be the poet鈥檚 fifth published collection, is a dazzling and haunting meditation on existence and impermanence. The sonnets delve into the fragility of perception, the boundaries between self and other, and the ways language fractures and recombines to illuminate meaning. Drawing on influences as diverse as physics, art, and philosophy, Fagan's poems balance precision with abstraction, creating a space where the reader encounters the immediacy of experience alongside its inevitable fading. What emerges is a deeply personal yet universal reckoning with the nature of being鈥攊ts joys, its terrors, and the unrelenting beauty of its transience. These poems do not seek to provide answers but to embody the questions that shape our lives. The result is a work that both disrupts and comforts, holding the reader in a delicate balance of wonder and disquiet.
Reviewing the collection, Phillips called the manuscript, 鈥渄azzling and multifaceted鈥� and praised the poems for being both 鈥渃erebral and accessible, intimate and expansive鈥攁 testament to Fagan鈥檚 ability to navigate a broad emotional and intellectual spectrum.鈥�
Since its launch in 1975, the 91桃色 Series of Contemporary poets has published landmark works by leading poets, including Robert Pinsky, Ann Lauterbach, and Jorie Graham. It currently sees the publication of two collections annually, in the autumn, and features both emerging and established poets. Previously edited by Paul Muldoon, and later Susan Stewart, the series has been under Rowan Ricardo Phillips' editorship since 2023.
A Violence and Atom and Void will be released in cloth, paperback, and ebook editions in October. Submissions for the 2026 series will be open from May 1, 2025 鈥� May 31, 2025. Please visit the series page for more information.
About Paula Bohince
Paula Bohince is the author of three previous poetry collections, Swallows and Waves, The Children, and Incident at the Edge of Bayonet Woods. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, and many other publications. Her poems have been hailed as 鈥渂eautiful and riveting鈥� (Los Angeles Review of Books) and praised as works that 鈥渞eward enormously upon first encounter, and only more so upon subsequent reads鈥� (The Rumpus).
About Aaron Fagan
Aaron Fagan is the author of four previous poetry collections, including Pretty Soon and A Better Place Is Hard to Find. His poems have appeared in 贬补谤辫别谤鈥檚, Granta, The New Republic, and other publications.