the delicacy of embracing spirals investigates the ways in which the personal narrative of Black queer womanhood can be expressed through, a radically human lens.

"mimi tempestt writes like a third testament in which God (or our understanding) finally matures. Like a painter longed for by a million canvasses. No peer. No rival. Just a cosmos enjoyed by friends; alive in the most exciting mind of our generation."-Tongo Eisen-Martin, author of Blood on the Fog

With a visual sensibility that explodes across the page, the collection begins with microcosmic poems of personal struggle and spirals out to macrocosmic texts of social and political critique. The book culminates in a fantastic account of the staging of a play with life-threatening consequences.

• Co-op available
• Galleys available
• Tour info: stops planned in the San Francisco Bay Area, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Cincinnati, Chicago, New York City, and Miami.
• National radio campaign: Pursuing NPR-affiliates with programming on queer identity, and poetry, including Out in the Bay, The Slowdown, Poetry Off the Shelf, and A Mouthful of Air, among others.
• National print campaign: Pursuing book reviews and features in national magazines and newspapers, with a focus on poetry and queer identity including The New Yorker, Harper's, Gay and Lesbian Review, Poetry Magazine, Salamander, Los Angeles Review of Books, Lambda Literary Review, Queerty and others.
• Pursuing excerpts in: Adroit Journal, AGNI, American Poetry Review, The Atlantic, BOMB, The Fiddlehead, Foglifter, Granta, Paris Review, Rumpus, LitHub, ZYZZYVA and elsewhere.
• Online/social media campaign: Outreach to sites focusing on poetry and queer identity, as well as City Lights's social media: Instagram (50K followers), Facebook (59K followers) and Twitter (136K followers)
• Promotion through author web site
• Bookseller/Library promotions, including IndieBound and others: We're pursuing nominations for IndieNext.

About the Author
mimi tempestt (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and daughter of California. She has a M.A. in Literature from Mills College, and is currently a doctoral candidate in the Creative/Critical Ph.D. in Literature at UC Santa Cruz. Her new book is the delicacy of embracing spirals, published by City Lights in October 2023. mimi's first book, the monumental misrememberings, was published with Co-Conspirator Press//The Feminist Center for Creative Work in 2020. In 2021, she was selected for participation in the Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices & Writers, and was a Creative Fellow at The Ruby in San Francisco. Her works can be found in Foglifter, Interim Poetics, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. A native of Los Angeles, she currently resides in Berkeley, CA.

Reviews

"the delicacy of embracing spirals treats the page as a cinematic space; lines dance down and across the page with beautiful abandon-the poems transition into each other hypnotically, loose delineations between where each work begins and ends that suits the flow and tone so well."-Summer Farah, The Millions

"The anthology catapults audiences head-on into a harrowing yet beautifully vivifying narrative detailing Tempestt's personal experiences as a Black, queer femme - alongside sociopolitical commentary that is visceral and macrocosmic."-Allison Yager, The Daily Californian

"tempestt is a self-proclaimed 'daughter of California,' and her collection begins by gazing inward, before moving seamlessly into questions of queerness and Blackness that drive a searing social and political critique."-Alta Magazine

"This dynamic collection is a vivid exploration of identity, creative expression, heartbreak, sex, and the sociopolitical experience of Black queerness."-Allison Escoto, Booklist *Starred Review

"Intelligent, raw and radically honest, tempestt's poetry is above all intimately human."-Laura Moreno, Bay Area Reporter

"Artist mimi tempestt delivered a show-stopper of a slam piece, the title poem from the delicacy of embracing spirals (City Lights, Oct), one of PW's Most Anticipated Poetry Books for fall. tempestt performed the piece from memory: 'It's in my bones now,' she said of the poem."-Nathalie op de Beeck, Publishers Weekly, on the CALIBA fall conference

"To encounter the words of mimi tempestt on the page, or in performance, is to witness the rare transcendency of language where the line becomes an exacting blade."-Truong Tran, author of book of the other

"mimi has honed her super power as a dynamic writer who is able to swiftly insert oneself into her art in a rhythmically unique and immortal kinda way. A way that makes you see her, yourself and the placement of the universe as we've known it to be. the delicacy of embracing spirals is an astonishing creation that will be to the times what Lorraine Hansberry's Young, Gifted and Black was in the 70's and beyond. This work of art spirals from the page to the stage. From the personal (innerspace) to the universal (outerspace). mimi tempestt is truly out of this world! "-Leelee Jackson, playwright, author of Comb Your Hair (Or You'll Look Like a Slave)

"the delicacy of embracing spirals (re)tracks mimi tempestt making a bloody break north: out the ravenous L.A. grotesquerie Mama Wanda warned us about over and again. And like the late Mz. Coleman, this poet has it down pat that grit teeth sometimes mean to be shivs as much as grimace and that a grimace may as well be a smile under misogynoir's butchering ogle. Recognize, as tempestt does, that what distinguishes a casting call from a cattle call is how long the gaze fixes on you and whether the credits say your name. For tempestt, whose "body armor is a pound of sweat," the role has been to be gored again again again again, dying fiercely in scenes of such drylongso verite you might mistake them for surreal. In this way, she carries Coleman and Kaufman with her to make a poetry I found too livid to be abject and too vivid to forget. Even as the theater's lights go up: tempestt, tempestt, tempestt."-Douglas Kearney, author of Sho

"the delicacy of embracing spirals is a ritual assemblage of flower-bearing armed spirits beautifully bleeding, brutally hewn self overstandings onto pages that can barely contain the divinity of the dance that tumbles forth between its pages. reading this book will make you better at loving yourself."-Dr. Ayodele Nzinga, First Poet Laureate of Oakland, author of Sorrowland Oracle

Praise for mimi tempestt's the monumental misrememberings

"I love this book, and I think I won't be able to do it justice by speaking about it because it's experimental. . . . The book is a tool for understanding America from an intersection I do not exist at and how living, if unchecked, could contribute to the harms that meet people like Black fem folks, Black queer folks, and Black trans folks at those intersections. It's a book I'm drawn to practically, but also just aesthetically, because it is stunning."-Hanif Abdurraqib, in his "8 Favorite Things He Can't Live Without" in New York Magazine's "The Strategist"

Awards
Winner of Ruby Artist Fellowship 2020 (United States) and Lambda Literary Retreat for Emerging Voices & Writ 2021 (United States).



Book Information
ISBN 9780872869257
Author mimi tempestt
Format Paperback
Page Count 150
Imprint City Lights Books
Publisher City Lights Books