Unbound Edition Press today announced it has signed poet Sophia Anfinn Tonnessen for her debut collection of poetry, Ecologia. The collection, noteworthy for its experimental forms, long poems and intentional repetitions, explores the intersections and overlaps of gender, identity and memory as they recombine and shift across time. The collection has a planned publication date of October 2021.
Sophia Anfinn Tonnessen is transgender, and her work captures the intense undeniability of an emerging self searching for a new ecology, both biological and political, in which vulnerable life adjusts inside a new physicality and also seeks protection from transphobic cultural pollution. “Blooming flowers and threatening weather repeat across the collection for a reason. We are always at risk, just for being,” she said.
“The collection is shaped by really serious and complex subjects, but it also features Carol Baskin from Tiger King, jokes about porn and truly terrible puns, by design. We would all be dead if we could not laugh,” said Tonnessen.
“Sophia’s collection is profoundly intimate, yet not fragile. These are poems of courage, strength and faith in the self, no matter the form it might take,” said Patrick Davis, publisher at Unbound Edition Press. “The poems soar in songs of celebration and protest, within a form I can only describe as the trans-lyric. Bodies, texts, memories, flowers all transform throughout the work, which brings a mystery to the collection.”
Sophia, presently a graduate student at the University of Michigan, studies Slavic Literature and lives with hundreds of books and one neglected houseplant. She is a graduate of Columbia University, where she earned degrees in Creative Writing and Russian Literature. Her earlier work has appeared in Columbia Review, Poet Lore and the anthology New York’s Best Emerging Poets.
