Irène Mathieu
Irène P. Mathieu is a pediatrician, writer, and public health researcher at the University of Virginia. Her most recent book is Grand Marronage (Switchback Books, 2019), which was selected as Editor’s Choice for the Gatewood Prize and runner-up for the Cave Canem/Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize. She is also the author of orogeny (Trembling Pillow Press, 2017), which won the Bob Kaufman Book Prize, and the galaxy of origins (dancing girl press, 2014). Irène is a recipient of Fulbright, Callaloo, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts fellowships, and is on the editorial staff of Muzzle Magazine and the Journal of General Internal Medicine’s humanities section.
Reading List
My head is full of powers
Recently I cut eight inches of my hair and counted six grays. My mother’s hair once was the color of dark copper. Someone said, you should have donated your hair. My parents’ dog once had hair the color of raven, but she’s full of grays now. I think each gray hair I grow has special […]
inside the big hot hour
man: asleep dog: long sleeping the afternoon: languid and couched my language: behind the curtain— throbbing into the screen door cicadas at its back, mites circling its haunches. what to say to the overcast hour? this moment twilight was conceived and I birthed a great mountain of worries. maybe the city doesn’t function because some […]
Labor Day
we’re in the pool with a handful of friends, old and new— drove twenty miles out of town to dip into this blue pocket at the top of a ninety-degree afternoon, the friend who lives in the farmhouse greeting us with chilled wine, a black puppy sleek and yapping beside her. he adopted me, she […]
Posts
Six Questions for Irène Mathieu about her New Collection, “Milk Tongue”
Irène Mathieu, featured in Volume 68.2, published her fourth collection of poetry, milk tongue, on June 13th, 2023. Here, she responds to questions about the book and her writing process. Can you tell me the story of this book: When did you start working on it? What were some of your preoccupations as […]