Joseph Harms is the author of Taps, an unabridged collection of his poetry collections Bel, Nous, Goety, Youel, and Funest, which has been published by Todos Contentos Y Yo También Press. Joseph’s poetry also appeared in The Gravity of the Thing’s Spring 2016 issue.
A finalist for the National Poetry Series Award, the Sexton Prize for Poetry, the Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize, and the Paul Nemser Book Prize, Joseph is the author of multiple poetry collections, as well as the novels Ades, Baal, Cant, and Wyrd, which have been collected in Evil (Expat Press). He is currently at work on a collection of poetry entitled Nihil, a centonical epic written in heptameter about nothingness and its twin life. Harms’ work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Boulevard, The Alaska Quarterly Review, The North American Review, The International Poetry Review, Crazyhorse, The Opiate, and Bayou Magazine. He holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers’ Program.
Praise for Taps:
“This is not poetry for the timid. There are magical incantations here, hallucinatory evocations of ordinary experience that will change the way a reader sees and thinks, hears and wonders. This poet’s work transcends, with music and image, our human existence. Harms is an alchemist, a soothsayer, a songwriter and a healer… This is poetry written from its most mind-bending heights and supernaturally darkest depths. You’ve not read a book like this before.”
—Laura Kasischke
“Joseph Harms is one of those rare poets who is truly inventing his own language. His poems are thickly populated sonic events that manage to plumb existential depths in weirdly ordinary settings. Most of all, it’s clear that this is a poet who loves—I mean loves—words. I’ve never read anything like Harms’ work; each time I encounter it, I emerge with better questions, wilder memories, and a fiercer devotion to all that poetic language can do.”
—Franny Choi