Two poems to be published in Bennington Review

A painting of the great auk, an extinct seabird who is the subject of one of Erin L. McCoy’s poetry manuscripts.

Two of my poems have been accepted for publication in Bennington Review. In the last year, I've watched closely as this gorgeous journal relaunched, 30 years after its last issue, and featured some of my favorite writers, from Gabrielle Bates to Nick Flynn to Mary Ruefle (oh, how I love Mary Ruefle!). I feel so humbled and thrilled and grateful and—yes, overwhelmed!—to be featured in the same journal as these stunning poets.

Particularly satisfying for me is that Bennington chose two very different poems of mine. One, called "Torches," is from a book-length series I'm writing about the great auk, a flightless bird driven to extinction in the mid-1800s. The auk’s systematic eradication was one of the first to draw humans' attention, at last, to the fundamental harm they were capable of imposing on their environment. "Torches" is the first (and hopefully the last) poem I've successfully written that reads in three different directions. Thanks for the idea, Tyehimba Jess!

The second poem, "Mandan, North Dakota," is a more personal poem written very shortly after the Trump election, inspired by a prompt from Rachel Zucker, who visited our MFA workshop at the University of Washington a few days after the election and was kind enough to sit there, stunned and terrified, alongside us. The poem hopes to deconstruct what we choose to call "American" and trace those foods, products, and lifestyles to their older (if never original) sources.

Many, many thanks to Michael Dumanis and all the editors at Bennington Review for believing in my work. I'll let you know when it's out! I'll be the one skipping up and down the Seattle sidewalks.