Lovability

The follow-up to her 2014 collection Sorrow Arrow (winner of the 2015 Oregon Book Award for Poetry), Emily Kendal Frey's volume LOVABILITY is a dialogue of social and interpersonal dynamics, as well as an exploration of the feelings of freedom and longing they produce. "Scourged the river bottom for my lost self"-- she writes in the collection's final poem, "I Became Less Acceptable to Those in Power"-- "Brought them up/ Touched their face/ The armor/ Split and leaking light." A professional counselor and teacher, Frey's work in LOVABILITY uses direct, image-driven poems to name the world we are a part of, to listen in. LOVABILITY was a finalist for the 2022 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.