Éireann Lorsung is the author of The Century, winner of the 2021 Maine Literary Award, as well as two previous collections of poems: Her book and Music for Landing Planes By, which was named a New and Noteworthy collection by Poets & Writers. She received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 2016. Since completing an MFA at the University of Minnesota, Lorsung has studied printmaking and drawing at Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice and taught high school in rural France. While living in Belgium, she ran a micropress called MIEL Books and a residency space called Dickinson House for writers and artists.
A meticulously detailed catalogue of ordinary people performing acts of extraordinary violence, The Century charts an awakening to structures of dominance and violence.
Full of youth, wonder, and imagination, this collection crosses distances and generations to celebrate the lives of women, and the bonds that bring them together. In these poems, the female body rises from a foundation of stars; songbirds are cut from paper and stormy light; and letters arrive, and disappear, mysteries contained within.
From the copper plate of an Intaglio print to the patched muslin form of a dressmaker’s mannequin to the maddered boy taking shape on a loom, these poems transform the ephemeral into the eternal. Along the way, the collection combines an affection for formality with an overarching intelligence and pertinence.
