Grid Books is a publisher of poetry and other editions foregrounding creative work that springs from the margins. We seek a variety of perspectives expressed in poetry, fiction, scholarly editions, fine art monographs, and projects encompassing oral history.
In keeping with our mission, we also maintain Off the Grid Press, an imprint that sponsors the annual Off the Grid Prize for older poets, which meets an important need for both writers and readers of contemporary poetry. This year’s contest will be judged by poet Jimmy Santiago Baca. Submissions will be accepted through August 31st 2021.
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Recommendations
More Americanby Sharon Hashimoto (Winner of the 2021 Off the Grid Poetry Prize)
In More American, Sharon Hashimoto reconstructs a collective memory. These poems convey the realities of assimilation, service, and internment as experienced by Japanese Americans during, and in the decades following, the Second World War. The poet reckons with the limitations of language, and by extension, notions of citizenship.
This Is Where I Live I Have Nowhere Else to Go, by Dennis Hinrichsen (Winner of the 2020 Off the Grid Poetry Prize)
Hinrichsen’s formally adventurous, cinematic collection is about everything at once—father, mother, family, the brutality of American history, the Pulse nightclub shooting, Alzheimer’s—all seen through the successive lenses of science, music, language, arcane history, photography, and film. These poems are meditations, brief quests for somewhere to stand in the tumultuous world.
Cold Storage, by Keith Althaus
Althaus is a poet who walks by the shadow yet thrills with his illuminations. In Cold Storage, he delivers poems that are intimate yet gorgeous, effortless yet intricate. This book marks the stunning return of one of America’s pure voices in poetry—and we are grateful for the light he’s cast.