Interrupted Geographies

Paperback / ISBN 978-0-9965864-7-4/ Pages: 90 / October 2017, Trio House Press/ $16.00

Purchase: Amazon/ IndieBound 

Selected by the Rumpus as July 2017 Poetry Book of the Month

“With bright attention, these poems map geographies of land and history and heart. While Iris Jamahl Dunkle writes specifically about particular places and people—some famous and some little known—there is no way to read these poems without understanding the ways she is always writing about you and also about me.”
–Camille T. Dungy, Trophic Cascade

“The poems of Interrupted Geographies are animated by the give-and-take between human life and the land we live on, showing us that we shape only what has already shaped and will continue to shape us. Whether introducing her readers to “the season of want” between winter and spring or the oilmen of nineteenth-century Pithole, Pennsylvania, Iris Jamahl Dunkle proves alert to the beautiful fragility of “life/strung between two pines,” and indeed, nothing in this book is untouched by transformation’s “continual/awakenings.” Between these covers, “the voice of/reason will swim in the deep of the creek—/a forgotten, shadowy trout.” Between these covers, home is “a place that washes/away with each passing rain.” Between these covers, “hope like a hawk’s scream…pierced us until we carried on.” Such hard hope is the reason to turn and return to these wise, fierce poems.”
–Brian Teare, The Empty Form Goes All the Way to Heaven

“It is a book to be read from beginning to end and then over again. On each reading, the meanings of these geographies, interrupted by our greed or our search for footing on a rocky landscape, deepen like fissures that beg to be explored.”
–MOTHERHOOD LITERATURE & ART

There's a Ghost in this Machine of Air 

Paperback / ISBN: 978-1625491619 / Pages: 96 / November 2015, Word Tech  Editions / $18.00

Purchase:  Amazon / IndieBound / Audiobook

There's a Ghost in this Machine of Air  tells the untold history of Western  Sonoma County from the  Gravenstein Apple to the  Laguna de Santa Rosa. 

"The first bite of a tangy Gravenstein apple or a stroll through the pastoral beauty of the Laguna de Santa Rosa might never be the same after one reads Iris Jamahl Dunkle’s new book of poetry, There’s a Ghost in this Machine of Air. Dunkle, who lives in Sebastopol, weaves prose, history and imagination together to create a vibrant collection of poems celebrating the west county’s past and present. 'History is part of what I breathe,' Dunkle said. 'It haunts me daily, in a good way.'"
from "Haunting poems give texture to Sonoma County history" by Ariana Reguzzoni  

Reviews: 
There's a Ghost in this Machine of Air Reviewd by Ann Fisher-Wirth
Barrett Warner on Iris Jamahl Dunkle’s “There’s a Ghost in this Machine of Air”
New Sonoma County Poet Laureate produces poems about local history by Jonah Raskin
Book Review: There’s a Ghost in This Machine of Air by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook
Iris Jamahl Dunkle. There’s a Ghost in this Machine of Air Reviewed by Dean Rader

Gold Passage 

Paperback / ISBN: 978-0985529208 / Pages: 88 / January, 2013, Trio House Press / $16.00

Purchase:  Amazon / IndieBound

Gold Passage was chosen for the Trio Award by Ross Gay, who said of her collection: "There is so much to admire in Gold Passage: the precise music; the strangeness and mystery; the deep wonder expressed in straight narratives and interior, chambered lyrics; a big human heart trying to make some sense of the unknowable world.  And too, magical outbursts of image and song--'I bloomed like a goddamned hyacinth' - to which I say Amen."
Reviews:
​BOOK REVIEW: Gold Passage by Iris Jamahl Dunkle.  Review by Lisa Cheby
​Buzzed Books #12: Iris Jamahl Dunkle’s Gold Passage

Chapbooks