Tres Abuelas y Una Mamá
Maureen Seaton, Carolina Hospital, Nicole Hospital-Medina, and Holly Iglesias — with two amazing chap books (Myth America and How to Get into Trouble) this collaborative group demonstrates the strength and creativity that can emerge from a shared spirit.
CAROLINA HOSPITAL’s books include the poetry collec-tions Key West Nights and Other Aftershocks (Anhinga Press), The Child of Exile: A Poetry Memoir (Arte Público Press), and Myth America (Anhinga Press); as well as the novel A Little Love, under the pen name C. C. Medina (Warner Books). She also edited A Century of Cuban Writers in Florida (Pineapple Press) and participated in the collaborative novel Naked Came the Manatee (G.P. Putnam’s Sons).
NICOLE HOSPITAL-MEDINA’s poetry appears in Myth America (Anhinga Press) and the anthologies, Poems from the Lockdown, Feminine Rising: Voices of Power and Invisibility, Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence, as well as in CURA: A Journal of Art and Action, The Miami Herald, Paper Nautilus, Blunderbuss Magazine, The Acentos Review, Canyon Voices and more. Also a visual artist, her paintings have been featured in Linden Lane Magazine and on the cover of Myth America.
HOLLY IGLESIAS is the author of three poetry collections—Sleeping Things, Angles of Approach, and Souvenirs of a Shrunken World—and a critical work, Boxing Inside the Box: Women’s Prose Poetry. She received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Edward Albee Foundation, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
MAUREEN SEATON authored many poetry collections, including The Sky Is an Elephant (Redacted Books); Undersea (Jackleg Press); Myth America (Anhinga Press); and Sweet World (Cavan Kerry Press), winner of the Florida Book Award. Over her long career, she received many honors including the Lambda Literary Award, an NEA, and the Pushcart. A memoir, Sex Talks to Girls (University of Wisconsin, 2008, 2018), also garnered a “Lammy.” With Denise Duhamel and David Trinidad, she co-edited Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry (Soft Skull Press); and with Neil de la Flor, she co-edited Reading Queer: Poetry in a Time of Chaos (Anhinga Press). How to Get Into Trouble is dedicated to her.
Tres Abuelas Y Una Mamá: Carolina Hospital, Nicole Hospital-Medina, Holly Iglesias, Maureen Seaton
Four nationally acclaimed and emerging poets from diverse backgrounds and generations merge to create a remarkable collaboration. Carolina Hospital, Nicole Hospital-Medina, Holly Iglesias and Maureen Seaton call themselves “Tres abuelas y una mamá.” For two years these poets met once a week to tackle old and new ways of poetic experimentation. Through shared lines or shared themes, sonnets, pantoums, triptychs, and haibuns, this compilation takes on historical, civic, and domestic violence, mental health, and feminism. These masterful poems are political and existential, as well as intimate and spiritual. In an age of growing discord, this book’s transcendental force lies in its banded energy.
MYTH AMERICA
First grade ritual: the daily rosary
she runs hard and skips until the fall
bloody scrape rather than taking a knee.
She remembers the boy being forced to crawl
across the field while his papa looked away,
and her knee stinging down the hall.
She leans in, her silk sleeve against his cheek
as he in fealty — her champion, her swain —
lowers himself, back bent, demeanor meek.
She thinks: Kill me now, and hops a train
to a land where no one’s heard of chivalry
or helplessness: two sides of a fake coin.
On the gridiron he kneels, not to pray
but to jolt a nation long asleep.
She ascends without a stumble, leaps and slays.
— CH, NHM, HI, MS
FREE SHIPPING TILL 4/20/24 WITH CODE: TROUBLE24 How To Get Into Trouble is an inventive and moving poetry collection by the collaborative group Tres Abuelas y Una Mama (Carolina Hospital, Nicole Hospital-Medina, Holly Iglesias, and Maureen Seaton). This is the second collection by these nationally recognized and diverse group of poets These collaborative and solo poems use playful and thoughtful artistry to delve into themes as diverse as time, infallibility, motherhood, democracy, and love. The book demonstrates once again the strength and creativity that can emerge from a shared spirit.
HOW TO GET INTO TROUBLE will delight you in every possible wicked (and sacred) way! Tres Abuelas y Una Mamá weave their poetry magic, collaborating on poems so sly you’ll never be sure which mamá wrote which (witch?) line. Now that you’ve had your cake and eaten it too, surrender to the wiles of your foolhardy heart and go wherever she wants to go. When the poets go solo (each poem is identified by initials) you still feel the influence of the other mamás. This is a gem of a chapbook with great advice— Call upon a fairy who is yourself. You’ll find yourself reading and chuckling then wanting to write poems, too, to join in the mischievous fun.”