Fraying Edge of Sky

Poetry that takes nature by surprise, observing the world while making it anew.

Danielle Hanson's poetry presents strange images, precise, surreal, and darkly comical. They tilt the world for the reader, leaving it new and strange and beautiful. Between the destruction of angels, creation of philosophers, and use of mythological creatures, Fraying Edge of Sky captures a side of the other-world humans don't see into very often: "A walking stampede, slow and terrible. / The hospital for nonexistent children. / A mountain devouring clouds." Hanson's beautiful lyricism and shocking imagery coalesce in wonderment, in poems that play with the power of light and dark, ultimately haunting the pages that make up her magical book, reminding us over and over of how "We are giants over the fallen." The book won the 2017 Codhill Poetry Award.