Look it what came in the mail! I’m so honored to be part of The Pushcart Prize anthology of 2022, along with so many writers I admire. Thank you, Christopher Citro, for the sweet hook-up and The American Poetry Review for publishing this grizzly homage to the little old ladies on my mother’s side.

Thank you, Tanner Barnes and Southeast Review, for this generous read! I'm a longtime fan of your mag...and of Tanner, too, though technically we just met. :)

Thank you, Aspen Matis and The Best American Poetry Blog, for helping me shape some swirling idea miasmas into a zoo of topiary hedge animals in this interview!

Thank you, Marcus Slease, for featuring my work in the Jupiter Project for Mercurius, an arts, literary & current affairs magazine.

”I like to surprise my reader and myself as I write. To do that, I have to set up a familiar situation on the page in which expectations are clear, then subvert those expectations. To zag instead of zig. Sometimes it's funny. Sometimes it's weird and creepy and feels like a ghost is typing through me.”

Mercurius Magazine was founded in May 2020, with the aim of connecting writers, artists, and thinkers under the loose themes of “transformation” and “vitality”. The idea was to create a meeting place for an eclectic range of voices, to be relevant and look for common ground in an age of fragmented discourses, cultural over-production, perpetual crisis, atomisation and hyper-specialisation.

I'm so excited for this event next Tuesday with the Ames Community Arts Council! I'll read a few poems from my new book, Crushing It, and talk about how poems can surprise the reader by subverting expectations.

Then we'll all try writing a poem that (hopefully) surprises the reader AND the writer (that's you!). If you hate writing poems, you can turn off your camera during this part and play Sudoku, or vacuum, or whatever. Then we'll regroup and share, if you're game. Writing and sharing are optional, but having a good time talking about poetry is mandatory.

This event is free and open to the public. All are welcome.

Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAtduuhqTgpGtyWpK2fr46n_HvWjnjQdB_h?fbclid=IwAR0lITurk0M1oIjl--0OAVd_ifql5ajCtdLhvyK_HL1dpdoXrGJeRI5stc0

I'm excited, curious, and a little nervous (!) for Tuesday night's Heart2HeartMessages show on KHOI Community Radio with host Anna Jinja Magnusson. 8:30-9:30 CT. Anna will plays songs inspired by the poems I read, and I'll read poems inspired by the music and our conversation. I can't wait!

"Knox is uncommonly adept at breaking hearts—not by means of love, but by reminding us of what it means to be alive."

Heap big thanks to Nate Logan (baller) for this lovely review.

V. Joshua Adams’ review of CRUSHING IT in Ron Slate’s* On the Seawall is brilliant, and I'm not just saying that because it's my book. Oh who am I kidding?! I totally am!

My favorite bit: "Knox’s poetry performs this embarrassment of the abject in a spectacular way, while also grounding her performance in the particulars of what one might be embarrassed about.. Think Sharon Olds on psychedelics.”

Crushing It and the word “abject” in the same review??!?! [Cue gameshow winner music] Finally!!!!

I‘ve been abjecting my head off all my life, but I just recently learned the term (specifically “burlesque abjection”) reading Barbara Ching’s book, Wrong's What I Do Best: Hard Country Music and Contemporary Culture. It’s the “Folks, I’m SO screwed it’s ridonkulous!” engine that powered country classics such as Lyle Lovett’s “I Married Her (Just Because She Looks Like You),” George Jones’ “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” Hank Williams’ “Nobody's Lonesome for Me,” and the Austin Lounge Lizards, “Paint Me on Velvet.” I’ve since seen it described as “reflexive sadomasochism.”

Ching reminds us that Dolly and Kitty and Loretta* never strapped on burlesque abjection pants. Apparently people don’t like to watch women abjecting burlesquely. But I do! I’ve memorized most of the pre-Connecticut I Love Lucy episodes and would happily watch a loop of Melissa McCarthy tumbling off a puffy lavender divan for hours.

*If you’re thinking, “What about Minnie Pearl?” you’re brilliant, too! But Minnie’s shtick was very upbeat and sproingy. More “Keep on the Sunny Side on Life” than “Act Naturally.”

When I started writing, I never felt like a Poet, because Poets, I believed, were special people who wrote eloquent musings that translated the janky feelings of mumbling mortals like me into baby-butt smooth sonnets and sestinas. Writing in voice was my IN to poetry, and most of those voices began, and still begin, in abjection.

P.S. Thank you, Ron and V!

because it’s terrific! And I’m not saying that just because it’s about me. Thank you, Natalia Conte, for your insightful, empathetic read.

“From the very first imagistic pleasure—a prehistoric conifer tree breaking through an icy lake, reaching a startling height, then falling as swiftly as it rose—Knox’s new collection brims with surprise…Self-deprecating, dry humor, combined with Knox’s wide-ranging imagination makes Crushing It difficult to put down.” —Women’s Review of Books