Salt, by Willow Gatewood

Poetry, chapbook, 36 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

A hybrid collection of poems, prose poems, and images, Salt explores identity and relationships through the lens of the natural world. Words evoke both the vastness and microcosm of the ocean and creatures within to tell a story of coming into adulthood. The author grapples with reality that, as if through osmosis, we collect both the treasures and grime from our pasts and the people around us. Salt is self-exploration: what does it mean to evolve into your identity?

In Salt, Willow invites readers to peer into diatoms, let sand eat their toes, and see reflections in the elements of Earth. Tenacity of growing up — and surviving — is as powerful as the ocean, and identity, as malleable as the shore of a windswept beach.

Willow is an interdisciplinary artist and storyteller from the endless hills and secluded forests of rural Virginia. Their work has been featured in journals including Soft Star Magazine, The Purposeful Mayonnaise, and Southern Regional Honors Council's Sanctuary, among others and they have performed at festivals like Earth Celebrations Ecological City, NYC, and Deep Water Literary Festival ('22 and '23), Narrowsburg, NY. Their first poetry chapbook, tangerine, was published by Bottlecap Press in 2023. Willow routinely merges visual, literary, and sonic mediums to create ethereal performances across the East Coast. They are passionate about using the intersections of art and science to tackle environmental and social issues, with hopes that their work inspires connection to the world around us. To find out more about their art, visit https://willowgatewood.com