We're continuing our summer beach read series with John A. Nieves, a Pushcart Prize winning poet, Professor at Salisbury College, and editor at the aptly named literary journal: The Shore Poetry. I highly recommend John's Substack, where he often pairs poems with music (... if you're building a poetry-music-playlist for the beach, check out his work!) Read on to hear John's ideal poetry-beach-read criteria and a few recommendations to pick up on the way to the shore...
Welcome to Poetry Beach Reads, John! Tell us... what makes a good beach read?
To me, a poetry beach read is something that makes you look at the horizon and see new. It would be books that open out and let you reach like the ocean for places you may never quite get to but know must be there. A poetry beach read has to offer, on every page, a new way to think about what is around you without ever demanding your environment fall away. It must add. Also, the book has to be able to handle distraction. If you look up at a ball bouncing by, it should not take more than a few seconds to refind your footing in any given poem. Finally, a great poetry beach read, must provide you with something to take back home, so the trip you made physically is met by the trip you take emotionally.
Here are three books John suggests:
Courtney Kampa A Bright and Borrowed Light (William Morrow & Company). Kampa offers a voice as curious about the world as a child on the beach, but with deep wisdom and play. She wonders about how we relate to each other, the world, ideas, entertainment, growing up/aging and communicating those complex ideas across time and space. I wrote an essay pairing this book with the Weakerthans incredible album Left and Leaving if you would like to make this a beach read & listen!
Valencia Robin Lost Cities (Persea Books) presses different environments against each other: college towns, cities, nature. In doing this, the beachiness of the beach can play off of these other environments to accentuate the shift in setting. Robin also explores how big ideas are still part of the body and where the body is and how it behaves matters. This book will open a space for understanding change and why we need it.
Chelsea Dingman Through a Small Ghost (University of Georgia Press) is about movement and migration, about history and struggle and triumph, how we carve ourselves out of where we are and what was before. So much of this book is in the snow or the tall forests of Canada, though there are some cameos made by warmer climes. This book will make you feel the you you are becoming while reading it, the way you are negotiating the sun and surf against all you brought to it.
About John A. Nieves
John A. Nieves has poems forthcoming or recently published in journals such as: Alaska Quarterly Review, Smartish Pace, American Poetry Review, swamp pink and 32 Poems. A 2025 Pushcart Prize winner, he also won the Indiana Review Poetry Contest and his first book, Curio, won the Elixir Press Annual Poetry Award Judge’s Prize. He is a professor of English at Salisbury University and an editor of The Shore Poetry.
Your Turn! Tell us... what makes a good beach read?
Are you a poet, editor, or reader burning with a few good recommendations? Please write to katie@thepoetryshop.com with subject header: "Poetry Beach Reads". Submit a paragraph describing your ideal beach read. Then recommend 3-5 poetry books (a paragraph for each) telling us why we should bring them to the beach. We will try our best to feature as many of these as we can through July and August.