Life Forms Still Living, by Kelsi Lindus

Poetry, chapbook, 40 pages, illustrated, from Bottlecap Features.

Life Forms Still Living is a poetry collection that grapples with what it means to be a creature on an ailing planet, and where, then, to put what is most human within us—love, despair, longing. In poems woven through with prose, as well as sketches by Melissa Sobin, Lindus uses humor to examine the everyday contradictions we carry—witnessing the horrors of climate change while hoping for a child; accepting the smallness of a single life while mourning the loss of a friend—and to probe the existential malaise of our current moment.

What happens when the water rises too high? When the apocalypse comes knocking? How do we live well as we’re dying? And where do we turn for meaning when the night sky won’t yield its mysteries? Full of fire and floods but also tender moments of humanity, Life Forms Still Living invokes, interrogates, and reimagines our myths as it seeks some semblance of peace—beauty, even—in our shared fate.

Kelsi Lindus is a writer and filmmaker living on an island in the Puget Sound. She holds an MFA from The New School. Her work has appeared in X-R-A-Y, Lost Balloon, Autofocus, Rejection Letters, and elsewhere. She is the daughter of a pastor and a teacher, and the aunt to five small humans.

Melissa Sobin is a researcher, visual artist, and creative facilitator based in the Bay Area. She studied painting at the Marchutz School of Fine Arts in France, and is interested in how art can be used to further self discovery, healing, and transformation. Her work explores the natural world as well as imagined and whimsical spaces. IG: @studio_scribbly_