Instead of Sunshine, by Seth Copeland

Poetry, chapbook, 36 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Instead of Sunshine is a collection of reflections from the post-Covid Upper Midwest. It contains travelogues moving through different locales and senses of time, ecopoetic reflections for the Info Age, and dog-headed saints wandering the streets at night. These poems ponders loss, climate change, and the way messaging around us can affect our sense of a place.

This collection moves through many small and big worlds in the current world’s complexity and confusion, from the shore of Lake Michigan to a rock ‘n’ roll crash memorial, from a lighthouse wake to the Art Institute of Chicago. This Midwest is a weird restless world looking for other possibilities. If you’re searching, too, these poems may help you find something.

Seth Copeland grew up in Indiahoma, Oklahoma, graduating high school in a class of nineteen people. He holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and currently teaches in southern Wisconsin. His poems have appeared in Puerto del Sol, Poet Lore, Yalobusha Review, Rust & Moth, and South Dakota Review, among others. He currently co-hosts the Tabi Po poetry series in Milwaukee and has edited the online magazine petrichor since 2016.