Quarantine Highway by Millicent Borges Accardi
From re-definition to re-calibration, the poems in this book are artifacts to the early and mid-days of the pandemic. Though not specifically labeled as "Covid poems,” they strike to the heart of the universal yet individual struggles of solitude, confinement, justice, isolation and, ultimately, self-reckoning. The poems push and pull between the constantly knocking global news cycle to the stillness of a surreal inner world.
NEA fellow, Millicent Borges Accardi, a Portuguese-American writer, is the author of three full-length poetry books, Injuring Eternity (World Nouveau, 2010), Only More So (Salmon Poetry 2016) and Through a Grainy Landscape (New Meridian Arts Press, 2021). Among her awards are fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), California Arts Council, CantoMundo, Fulbright, Foundation for Contemporary Arts NYC (Covid grant), Creative Capacity, Fundação Luso-Americana, and Barbara Deming Foundation, “Money for Women.” She’s led poetry workshops at Keystone College, Nimrod Writers Conference, Rhode Island College, Massachusetts Poetry Festival, Split this Rock, The Muse in Norfolk, Virginia, and the University of Texas, Austin. Notable readings at University of California at Riverside, Brown University, Rutgers, UMass Dartmouth, and the Carr Reading Series at the University of Illinois. She lives in the hippie-arts community of Topanga, CA. Recent poems appear in New American Writing, Laurel Review, Wallace Stevens Journal, TAB, and Quiddity and her non-fiction can be found in The Writers Chronicle, Another Chicago Magazine, Poets Quarterly, and Portuguese American Journal. Millicent lives in the hippie arts community of Topanga, California and founded two long-time reading series: Kale Soup for the Soul and Loose Lips (based at Los Angeles County Library).