'[Heather Christle is] among the small handful of authors whose books I reflexively, half-consciously reach toward whenever I need inspiration, consolation, delight. Nobody thinks like her' Kaveh Akbar, Electric Literature

'This is a stunning book' Jericho Brown

'A striking celebration of risk and beauty' Kit Fan, Guardian

Paper Crown is Heather Christle's first new collection of poems in over a decade.

Throughout these exuberant poems, Christle conjures moments when the world's events - a child's words, early twentieth-century predictions of drone warfare, dinners with friends - alight themselves with the odd logic of dreams and serendipity.

With tenderness and verse, honesty and curiosity, Paper Crown invites readers to look up from its pages and recognise that the day going on around them could very well be its own poem.

Mistake

For years I have seen
dead animals on the highway

and grieved for them
only to realize they are

not dead animals
they are t shirts

or bits of blown tire
and I have found

myself with this
excess of grief

I have made with
no object to let

it spill over and
I have not known

where to put it or
keep it and then today

I thought I know
I can give it to you

About the Author
HEATHER CHRISTLE is the author of the literary memoir In the Rhododendrons (2025), The Crying Book (2019), and four poetry collections, including The Trees The Trees (Corsair Poetry, 2019). She is an Associate Professor at Emory University. Her poems have appeared in The Believer, Granta, London Review of Books, The New Yorker, and Poetry.

Reviews
I have never before read a book like Paper Crown. In it, Heather Christle opens the doors of her mind as if it is a library where we are welcome to roam so long as we understand that "If pages fall from high / enough they can take down a house." Seemingly domestic in their sly meditations, always exultant in their view of the natural world, these poems clarify the mind of one fully aware of the fear and despair that dwells in and around us in the midst of our desires whether they be erotic or artistic or the desire to be awed by a stunning book. This is a stunning book. I am stunned. -- Jericho Brown
Heather Christle's Paper Crown renders the precise darts and folds of lyric attention, revealing poetry to be a timekeeping as intimate and exact as that of perfect friendship or the pineal gland: "The click of time saying yes." -- Joyelle McSweeney
Heather Christle's Paper Crown anticipates times when inner visions match the outer world * Library Journal *
A striking celebration of risk and beauty -- Kit Fan * Guardian *
My favourite poet of all time -- Paige Lewis



Book Information
ISBN 9781472158680
Author Heather Christle
Format Paperback
Page Count 80
Imprint Corsair
Publisher Little, Brown Book Group
Weight(grams) 100g
Dimensions(mm) 210mm * 130mm * 10mm