BRATTLEBORO — Joshua R. Helms, winner of the Dzanc Poetry Collection Award, will read from his debut poetry collection, Machines Like Us, at Everyone's Books, 25 Elliot St., on Friday, April 8, at 6 p.m.
The author will be available for a brief question-and-answer session after the reading.
Helms, a Brattleboro resident, describes Machines Like Us as part love story, part dreamscape, and part exploration of self.
“For the characters (Speaker, Boy, and Historian), love is dangerous, disorienting, self-erasing. The three struggle to tether and untether.They continuously disturb and upend, externally and internally. They are terrified to be with and without each other. The resulting horror - blood, broken bodies, decomposition - is a landscape, both natural and unnatural, of their glorious failure.”
Helms is a nonbinary queer person from the South. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alabama and his writing has appeared in various print and online journals, including alice blue review, Copper Nickel, DIAGRAM, Fairy Tale Review, Gertrude, New England Review, Phoebe, Sonora Review, and Word Riot.