Wave Books is an independent poetry press based in Seattle, Washington, dedicated to publishing exceptional contemporary poetry, poetry in translation, and writing by poets. The press was founded in 2005, merging with established publisher Verse Press. By publishing strong, innovative work in finely crafted editions, we hope to continue to challenge the values and practices of readers and add to the collective sense of what’s possible in contemporary poetry.
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Recommendations
Hoarders by Kate Durbin
In Hoarders, Durbin deftly traces the associations between hoarding and collective US traumas rooted in consumerism and the environment, where each poem is a prismatic portrait of a person and the beloved objects they hoard. Here, Hoarders ultimately embraces with sympathy the difficulty and complexity of the human condition.
Sho by Douglas Kearney
Both dazzling and devastating, Sho is a genius work of literary precision, wordplay, farce, and critical irony. Kearney has concocted poems that destabilize the spectacle, leaving looky-loos with an important uncertainty about the intersection between violence and entertainment.
A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure by Hoa Nguyen
A poetic meditation on historical, personal, and cultural pressures pre- and post-“Fall-of-Saigon” with verse biography on the poet’s mother, Diệp Anh Nguyễn, a stunt motorcyclist in an all-women Vietnamese circus troupe. Multilayered, plaintive, and provocative, the poems in A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure are alive with archive.