Skins Under the Hammer, by Damon Hubbs

Poetry, chapbook, 32 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Skins Under the Hammer is an eco-psychedelic journey through place, environment, memory and planet. Inspired by Mike Berners-Lee’s seminal call to arms — There is No Planet B, Damon Hubbs creates a frightening pastoral of toxic hazards and modern nightmares. The heart of the world is contradictory, and Hubbs exhumes the voices and language of the past to confront the contagions of the present — environmental degradation, the climate crisis, and the entangled mutualism of man and nature.

The poems in Skins Under the Hammer burn with lyric intensity. They explore traditional and modern poetic forms such as the Ubi sunt and Duplex. At the same time, many of the poems are assembled with experimental fragments and unconscious associations, manic blooms of Romanticism and archaic English — a sonic texture that walks the line between horror and elegy, warning sign and celebration. Skins Under the Hammer is a deep dive into the Anthropocene. The hills have eyes. A river runs through it. But the elements are changing faster than we want to admit.

Damon Hubbs is the author of several collections of poetry, including Venus at the Arms Fair (Alien Buddha Press), Coin Doors & Empires (Alien Buddha Press), Charm of Difference (Back Room Poetry) and The Railroad Poems (LJMcD Communications). His work has been published in numerous journals and magazines, and he is a multiple Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee. Damon is a poetry editor at Blood+Honey and The Argyle Literary Magazine. He lives in New England.