Unbound Edition Press today announced it will publish Austin Segrest’s second collection of poetry, Groom. The title is scheduled for publication in April 2025.
Originally from Alabama, Segrest is the author of Door to Remain, which won the Vassar Miller Poetry Prize. His poems and essays have appeared in American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, and Threepenny Review. He has received fellowships from the Ucross Foundation, the Fine Arts Work Center, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the NEH. He teaches at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin.
Adrienne Su wrote of Door to Remain that “the music and precision of each poem’s construction are deft, true and absorbing.” Describing the elegies for the poet’s mother, which form the heart of that collection, David Rivard wrote, “He reminds us of how our losses are shared. And being shared, they may borne through that door that remains open to us still, despite it all.”
Peter Campion, executive editor at Unbound Edition Press, acquired Groom for the house, and is editing the work. He notes: “It’s an astonishing collection. These lyric poems achieve a depth and dimension that we would normally expect from a novel or memoir. The narrative itself remains gripping, harrowing, and totally surprising—the story of an abusive relationship with which the poet comes to terms in the present. But these poems resist synopsis and refuse moralizing. Instead, they offer immersion in a rich and troubling world of embedded detail. This is a book of great magnitude and is deeply moving.”
Patrick Davis, publisher and editor in chief at Unbound Edition Press, said, “Austin Segrest possesses the singular quality that gives rise to exceptional writing, no matter the genre. He holds courage as his steady pen, refusing to look away, to accept easy answers, or to sacrifice his poetic craft to a merely confessional urge. His is poetry that will remain, the way memory itself can both haunt and heal.”
