The Wild Parrots of Marigny now available for pre-publication order!

My latest chapbook, The Wild Parrots of Marigny (Querencia Press), is now available for pre-publication order from both Amazon and Barnes & Noble. This chapbook is a collection of poems about New Orleans and Louisiana, and it covers a wide range of topics--Hurricane Katrina, the BP oil spill, egrets, Creole tomatoes, the state's sometimes breathtaking natural beauty, and more.

Publication of The Wild Parrots of Marigny follows publication of my other New Orleans-themed poetry chapbook, The Last Time I Saw You.

 “Diane Elayne Dees’ collection of 27 poems, most previously published, all much appreciated, revive an artistry of emotional immediacy that is much needed. Through her careful wordcraft we come to value life in the Mississippi Delta region from egrets to storm victims, Creole tomato aficionados and pine bark beetles to the devastated unhoused. Many, if not all of the poems reveal something of the flooding that dominated headlines and lives in August 2005, if not to this day. Diving headlong into some form of wreckage that was once Louisiana and New Orleans after the ‘natural disaster’ that was Hurricane Katrina, her poems revive the battered corpse of memory, collective and individual. And, as she precisely sums up in ‘Things to Do While You Wait for the Roofer’—‘Pour yourself a drink and watch the news. / Get a grip on your rage.’ Yes, rage is there to assist.”

--Jan Keough, editor, 
Origami Poems Project

You can reserve your copy of The Wild Parrots of Marigny here or here. Publication date is December 30, 2022. (For some reason, today, Amazon removed the pre-publication order option and replaced it with a "currently unavailable" wish list option. I'm hoping that they change it back soon; at any rate, you can always do the wish list option, or you can order from Barnes & Noble.)