Solastalgia

A mnemonic device for remembering the names of the Great Lakes is that, when combined, the first letter of each lake’s name spell “HOMES”: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior. The poems in this collection chart the narrative of one speaker’s exodus from Michigan and their quest to find a new home. In so doing, the poems interrogate what “home” is, with the friction between “feeling at home” and “being at home” serving as the nucleus around which themes of sexuality, ecology, family, language, and self-identity orbit.