Cover image by Nicole Heffron
Linnaeus: The 26 Sexual Practices of Plants, by Emily Skillings
2014 (Sold out)
The Swedish author August Strindberg wrote that, “Linnaeus was in reality a poet who happened to become a naturalist.” Through Skillings, we meet the poet in Linnaeus. Linnaeus who opens his mouth and a new word flies out, who touches his ear and hears, “you are making sense,” who celebrates in private. Despite an attempt to atomize and categorize, things become other things: his hand becomes a part of his desk, little human turds tumble out of the esophagus of an elevator, leaves become buttons. Sure, he laid the foundations for the modern biological naming scheme of binomial nomenclature but in Skillings’ portrait, he’s also somewhat wayward, prone to irritability, and like the best of us, a little dirty.
Linnaeus was first published in Issue 1 of Stonecutter: A Journal of Art & Literature. STEM & Leaf calls Linnaeus “luscious and spare,” and Time Out names it one of Ten Chapbooks to Read Now.
Skillings' other chapbook, Backchannel, is out from Poor Claudia. Recent poems can be found in the Philadelphia Review of Books, Stonecutter, Maggy, Elderly, Bone Bouquet, Big Lucks and Poor Claudia :: Crush. Skillings dances for The Commons Choir and presents her own choreography in New York. She lives in Brooklyn, where she is a member of the Belladonna* Collaborative, a feminist poetry collective and event series.
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