Jory Mickelson’s (they/them) first book Wilderness//Kingdom, was the winner of a 2020 High Plains Book Award. Their second and third books, All This Divide (Spuyten Duyvil Press) and Picturing (End of the Line Press) are out in 2024. They received their BA in English from Western Washington University and their MFA in poetry from the University of Idaho. Their work can be found in Court Green, Painted Bride Quarterly, Jubilat, Sixth Finch, Ninth Letter, Diode, and The Rumpus.  They are currently working on poems that explore the intersection of visual art, queerness, erasure, gender, and history.

They received fellowships from the Port Townsend Writers Conference, Lambda Literary Foundation, Winter Tangerine, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico. They write in the moss and mud of the Pacific Northwest.

2024 Jack Straw Alumni Poetry Series:

All This Divide is a poetry collection which investigates the contemporary world in crisis: pandemics, environmental collapse, and unfettered capitalism. These poems articulate and examine the history and legacy of the West. Cutting into one reveals the other, each story touching those that come before and after.

Plunder: revolver

Your right hand has grasped for
me; now the gate may not

be shut. I loosen the mouth
and quicken the heart in

its shadowed chest. Equip you
to break the best and worst;

to me, there is no difference.
I make well-being & create

calamity. I do not cause
this darkness, but draw it forth

from within you, spring the lock
of desire or dread. My six hot

stars are a constellation called
surety. I am the lord of this

place, an idol weeping tears
of lead, the spoiled fruit

of all your reaching.

2022 Writers Program

Sound Clips

Recent Posts

View More Posts