Finalist, Pamela Paige Porter Poetry Prize
In reservoirs, the drawdown zone is the land between high and low water where, due to fluctuating levels, a diversity of flora and fauna fail to thrive. Emily Nilsen’s Drawdown finds words for the grief of recurrent miscarriages in the shadow of a reservoir, where a once-lush valley no longer pulses with life. Raw, vulnerable, and unflinchingly honest, Drawdown explores the overlap between ecology and physiology, looking for beauty in dysfunction and ways to coexist with industrial and unborn hauntings. These poems speak and listen in tandem as they navigate the waters of complicated loss.