Yavanika Press
Short Prose & Hybrids
“Circadian Love brings to the reader not only a beloved family but the American South with all its tradition and character and pathos. Two grandmothers, the main characters, bind the work together, but every page brings a new personality, a compelling memory, a chuckle, or wisdom born from time and reflection.”
— Nancy Swanson, Author of Washed and Dried
Circadian Love
“What a delight to be privy to this epistolary friendship between Shloka Shankar of Bangalore, India, and John Levy of Tucson, Arizona. Fresh and never pretentious, their words are buoyed by the spirit of discovery, the anything goes and yes, and attitude that is at the heart of all great collaborations. Writing in prose poems, haiku, haibun, and free verse, sometimes loosely completing each other’s forms, these two poets share the joy that ‘always/starts with a crumb/Hanseling and Greteling/into the unknown’ (Shankar). Any reader/writer keen on innovative writing will find an exemplar in the skyscape of always.”
— Sabine Miller, Author of rock paper scissors ocean
the skyscape of always
Presenting our 100th title, a full-length collection of author John Levy’s iconic ‘Note’ poems, spanning the years 2022-2026.
“I began writing poems that were essentially letters or notes to friends in 1973. This book is a collection of 48 note poems written between the years 2023 and 2026. These note poems are addressed to friends, and often the friends are poets. I have the friend in mind as I begin to write. Usually, I start the note without knowing what I’ll say, enjoying thinking of the friend and hoping I’ll find something to say along the way.”
— John Levy
Notes from Tucson
Mini Chapbooks
“This tiny, jewel-like collection almost functions as a single poem, with sound values, images, and motifs that run throughout the work and speak back and forth to each other. Its narrators converse with themselves, with an unnamed audience addressed as “you,” and with historical and literary touchstones like Martin Luther King Jr. and the ancient poets Rahim and Li Po. They explore and tussle with their place in the spiritual and natural worlds, making keen observations, frank confessions, and lighthearted admonishments that draw us into those worlds alongside them. It’s a work of both philosophy and music, offering us ‘a farm porchlight / to travel straight across the prairie.’”
— Melissa Allen, Editor of Password: the journal of very short poetry
Dialogue with Light
“Cynthia Hendel’s debut collection is a delight that expands beyond the normative. Each poem’s structure is integrated into its meaning (or meanings) as if the words rose from it organically. Wings and light are in conversation with a midnight longing. A carefully placed pause makes the dove’s repeated song nearly audible. Ranging from single-line poems to inventive concrete works in a variety of shapes, these poems evoke a world that invites the reader to linger, contemplate, and read again.”
— Kat Lehmann, Author of no matter how it ends a bluebird’s song
Aurora in the eye
“Ornithology is, from start to finish, a feathered zoo. A winged beast. From doves to starlings, pheasants to pigeons, juncos to turkeys, reading this collection feels like stepping into a fluttering sanctuary. It’s touching, it’s tender, it’s thoughtful, and, yes, it’s quite strange. I wouldn’t prefer it any other way. After all, ‘The sky is a blue onion / on a salad / these birds ordered.’”
— Benjamin Niespodziany, Author of Cardboard Clouds and Founder of Piżama Press
Ornithology
“Dua, from the Malay word meaning ‘two,’ is an immersive, storytelling poetic form created by ai li in 2022. It focuses on distilling thoughts into what really matters.
Art and culture are deeply ingrained in Hyderabadi life. Roads are named after poets who were inspired by the rockscapes of the city. Here, annoyance is poured out poetically, and a cuppa savoured from a saucer is all the inspiration one needs. These verses are fragrant like the attar (perfume) still sold in the old city. This chapbook, like the city, is unapologetic and seems to say aeseich: We are like this only.”
— Ravi Kiran, Editor of LEAF – Journal of The Daily Haiku
Aage Se Left
Japanese short-forms
“Il Cielo Terso is a book that takes minutes to read and much longer to put down. Its clarity—the clarity of the title—is not an absence of depth, but the very condition in which depth, and the double linguistic inheritance that sustains it [Italian and English], becomes visible.”
— Maria Laura Valente
Il Cielo Terso
“What does it cost to live a day? In these finely crafted poems, Ron Scully measures the hours from dawn to midnight, discovering unexpected value in ordinary moments. The language of wages, debt, and exchange becomes a way of thinking about love, memory, absence, and time itself. Quietly inventive and deeply attentive, the cost of living reminds us that what matters most is rarely what can be counted.”
— Stephen Toft, Editor of fugu soup
the cost of living
“erasing the dust from i is an indisputably remarkable collection of mostly one-line poems leading to deeper introspection. You look into Arvinder’s words via the lenses of latent experiences, and the poem unfolds its resplendence further, taking you on a journey, magically, through your own life. Her monoku, ‘the widening whorls of my sins mahakumbh,’ is a splendid example. How masterful the string of words, and how it walks me, step by step, through my personal memories of people, of places. This is definitely a collection I would return to again and again.”
— Dr. Sangita Kalarickal, Editor-in-Chief, Drifting Sands: a Journal of Haibun and Tanka Prose
erasing the dust from i
Mixed-genre
“Bursting Moon is a powerful and poignant chapbook about a woman’s deep desire to conceive and deliver a healthy baby. Corine Timmer’s journey will leave you speechless and, at times, heartbroken. A must-read for every woman who is struggling with infertility.”
— Pamela A. Babusci, Editor of the art of tanka
Bursting Moon
“Aided by Schoder’s curious intelligence, Out of the Blue is an investigation of ordinary thoughts fallen through the trap door of her playfully meandering muse. In this short work, she leaves us floating in a surreal-like cloud of senses unmoored from the gravity of a ‘burnt root of a soul/held so tightly in ground.’ One is left charmed—if not uprooted and elevated—by her imagistic, sonic, and visual aplomb.”
— Barbara A. Perry, Poet
Out of the Blue
