White Trash Warlock, by Sav Gripshover

Poetry, chapbook, 36 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

White Trash Warlock is an ode to Kentucky in a million shapes and forms: love letter, suicide note, breakup text, lullaby. The collection is a bittersweet and absurd dissection of adolescence as a genderweird artist stumbling through life on a farm. The chapbook retraces life from the present moment – existence as a masochistic-yet-optimistic individual working in the city – all the way back to childhood, where horses and dogs and smoke rule the earth. At the very beginning of the world and the end of the collection, poems about humanity itself rise to replace the Appalachian-sized ache.

This debut chapbook strives to fuse southern gothic with modern maximalism. Poems about the cosmic horror of horse existence and decapitated gummy bears exist in strange harmony against a backdrop of mixed influence: the film Gummo, the discography of Nicole Dollanganger, and the dark underbelly of the 2010s web. Odd, angsty, and alien, White Trash Warlock is a compilation of memories both colorful and foul.

Sav Gripshover is a writer and student born and raised in Kentucky. As a third-year student at Bellarmine University, they study Communications and Digital Media. Their writing has previously appeared in online journals including Anti-Heroin Chic, Mulberry Literary, Gastropoda, and more.