Sky Responds to Our Holler — Zenaida Peterson
“A veiless vehicle, verse-rich, vehement & vesselled, Sky Responds to Our Holler holds this realm of earth-living and American-loss to the fire. Zenaida’s thunderous collection of poetic incantations unleash softness, memory, and gumption. Revealing the super-natural acts we can make interpersonally to redefine family, order, and kingdom in our wilderness. These poems are nature; bending pastoral and spoken word poetry traditions to breach their own path. Even gathered & gutted by loss, love, community, nationalism, addiction, and doubt, Zenaida reminds us Weren’t we meant to be this alive? That hope starts with querying & vulnerability. It makes sense that the first and last words of this boundless collection are In love.”
—Golden, author of Reprise and A DEAD NAME THAT LEARNED HOW TO LIVE
“Sky Responds to Our Holler sings in the spectacular and achy home where hope and despair meet, page after page is a devotion that eclipses sorrow but refuses to forget it. Through poems dreaming of trans liberation, southern resistance, Black joy, new family, and community organizing, Zenaida creates a voice bursting with unshakable optimism to be our guardian — body in the here and now and eyes on the horizon preparing for someplace freer, someplace we all deserve. Through prose, lyric, and form, these poems grow from harm and healing endured, caused, and witnessed. This book is for those who turn to poems to teach us how to live a more just, connected life. This book is a hymnal for rhizomatic kinship, a call for a more righteous connectedness to kith and land, and a how-to guide for surviving what seeks to undo us.”
—Desireé Dallagiacomo, author of SINK
“If ‘Black joy says we have survived this much, haven't we?’ then these poems offer a vision of the world in which queer and trans Black folk live in abundance and freedom. From inventing new prayers to drafting lessons for a freedom school for future youth, Peterson's intimate work challenges the reader to walk closer in relationship with the natural way things should be, releasing the unnatural legacies of colonialism, gender, and racialized violence. Sky Responds to Our Holler is not just a collection of poetry; it's a blueprint for a better future.”
—Ariana Brown, author of We Are Owed.
“Sky Responds to Our Holler is a gentle arsenal of lyrical vignettes, inviting us to examine the integral machinations of love, faith and the fight for Black queer liberation. Zenaida Peterson’s poetry is adorned by the distinct lineage of literary rebels who came before them—June Jordan and Muriel Rukeyeser come to mind—driven by a deep responsibility to confront inequality with integrity, intention, imagination and abundance. We need these poems if we are to survive ourselves.”
—Rachel McKibbens, author of blud
“From the first few pages of The Sky Responds to Our Holler, I gave up underlining my favorite lines—because I was underlining everything. Zenaida Peterson’s poetic voice is a Swiss army knife, each poem instinctively unfolding into the exact tool needed to carve out its truth. At times urgent and electric, at other times radically tender, these poems don’t just explore the architecture of identity—they build a home inside it, a place to return to, to chant in, to love oneself more fiercely. This is a book of bodies—Black bodies, queer bodies, trans bodies, soft bodies, hungry bodies, bodies adorned with ink, with love, with survival. Peterson does not ask permission to take up space—they claim it, stretch into it, make it sacred. I was changed by this book.”
—Megan Falley, author of Drive Here and Devastate Me
“A veiless vehicle, verse-rich, vehement & vesselled, Sky Responds to Our Holler holds this realm of earth-living and American-loss to the fire. Zenaida’s thunderous collection of poetic incantations unleash softness, memory, and gumption. Revealing the super-natural acts we can make interpersonally to redefine family, order, and kingdom in our wilderness. These poems are nature; bending pastoral and spoken word poetry traditions to breach their own path. Even gathered & gutted by loss, love, community, nationalism, addiction, and doubt, Zenaida reminds us Weren’t we meant to be this alive? That hope starts with querying & vulnerability. It makes sense that the first and last words of this boundless collection are In love.”
—Golden, author of Reprise and A DEAD NAME THAT LEARNED HOW TO LIVE
“Sky Responds to Our Holler sings in the spectacular and achy home where hope and despair meet, page after page is a devotion that eclipses sorrow but refuses to forget it. Through poems dreaming of trans liberation, southern resistance, Black joy, new family, and community organizing, Zenaida creates a voice bursting with unshakable optimism to be our guardian — body in the here and now and eyes on the horizon preparing for someplace freer, someplace we all deserve. Through prose, lyric, and form, these poems grow from harm and healing endured, caused, and witnessed. This book is for those who turn to poems to teach us how to live a more just, connected life. This book is a hymnal for rhizomatic kinship, a call for a more righteous connectedness to kith and land, and a how-to guide for surviving what seeks to undo us.”
—Desireé Dallagiacomo, author of SINK
“If ‘Black joy says we have survived this much, haven't we?’ then these poems offer a vision of the world in which queer and trans Black folk live in abundance and freedom. From inventing new prayers to drafting lessons for a freedom school for future youth, Peterson's intimate work challenges the reader to walk closer in relationship with the natural way things should be, releasing the unnatural legacies of colonialism, gender, and racialized violence. Sky Responds to Our Holler is not just a collection of poetry; it's a blueprint for a better future.”
—Ariana Brown, author of We Are Owed.
“Sky Responds to Our Holler is a gentle arsenal of lyrical vignettes, inviting us to examine the integral machinations of love, faith and the fight for Black queer liberation. Zenaida Peterson’s poetry is adorned by the distinct lineage of literary rebels who came before them—June Jordan and Muriel Rukeyeser come to mind—driven by a deep responsibility to confront inequality with integrity, intention, imagination and abundance. We need these poems if we are to survive ourselves.”
—Rachel McKibbens, author of blud
“From the first few pages of The Sky Responds to Our Holler, I gave up underlining my favorite lines—because I was underlining everything. Zenaida Peterson’s poetic voice is a Swiss army knife, each poem instinctively unfolding into the exact tool needed to carve out its truth. At times urgent and electric, at other times radically tender, these poems don’t just explore the architecture of identity—they build a home inside it, a place to return to, to chant in, to love oneself more fiercely. This is a book of bodies—Black bodies, queer bodies, trans bodies, soft bodies, hungry bodies, bodies adorned with ink, with love, with survival. Peterson does not ask permission to take up space—they claim it, stretch into it, make it sacred. I was changed by this book.”
—Megan Falley, author of Drive Here and Devastate Me
“A veiless vehicle, verse-rich, vehement & vesselled, Sky Responds to Our Holler holds this realm of earth-living and American-loss to the fire. Zenaida’s thunderous collection of poetic incantations unleash softness, memory, and gumption. Revealing the super-natural acts we can make interpersonally to redefine family, order, and kingdom in our wilderness. These poems are nature; bending pastoral and spoken word poetry traditions to breach their own path. Even gathered & gutted by loss, love, community, nationalism, addiction, and doubt, Zenaida reminds us Weren’t we meant to be this alive? That hope starts with querying & vulnerability. It makes sense that the first and last words of this boundless collection are In love.”
—Golden, author of Reprise and A DEAD NAME THAT LEARNED HOW TO LIVE
“Sky Responds to Our Holler sings in the spectacular and achy home where hope and despair meet, page after page is a devotion that eclipses sorrow but refuses to forget it. Through poems dreaming of trans liberation, southern resistance, Black joy, new family, and community organizing, Zenaida creates a voice bursting with unshakable optimism to be our guardian — body in the here and now and eyes on the horizon preparing for someplace freer, someplace we all deserve. Through prose, lyric, and form, these poems grow from harm and healing endured, caused, and witnessed. This book is for those who turn to poems to teach us how to live a more just, connected life. This book is a hymnal for rhizomatic kinship, a call for a more righteous connectedness to kith and land, and a how-to guide for surviving what seeks to undo us.”
—Desireé Dallagiacomo, author of SINK
“If ‘Black joy says we have survived this much, haven't we?’ then these poems offer a vision of the world in which queer and trans Black folk live in abundance and freedom. From inventing new prayers to drafting lessons for a freedom school for future youth, Peterson's intimate work challenges the reader to walk closer in relationship with the natural way things should be, releasing the unnatural legacies of colonialism, gender, and racialized violence. Sky Responds to Our Holler is not just a collection of poetry; it's a blueprint for a better future.”
—Ariana Brown, author of We Are Owed.
“Sky Responds to Our Holler is a gentle arsenal of lyrical vignettes, inviting us to examine the integral machinations of love, faith and the fight for Black queer liberation. Zenaida Peterson’s poetry is adorned by the distinct lineage of literary rebels who came before them—June Jordan and Muriel Rukeyeser come to mind—driven by a deep responsibility to confront inequality with integrity, intention, imagination and abundance. We need these poems if we are to survive ourselves.”
—Rachel McKibbens, author of blud
“From the first few pages of The Sky Responds to Our Holler, I gave up underlining my favorite lines—because I was underlining everything. Zenaida Peterson’s poetic voice is a Swiss army knife, each poem instinctively unfolding into the exact tool needed to carve out its truth. At times urgent and electric, at other times radically tender, these poems don’t just explore the architecture of identity—they build a home inside it, a place to return to, to chant in, to love oneself more fiercely. This is a book of bodies—Black bodies, queer bodies, trans bodies, soft bodies, hungry bodies, bodies adorned with ink, with love, with survival. Peterson does not ask permission to take up space—they claim it, stretch into it, make it sacred. I was changed by this book.”
—Megan Falley, author of Drive Here and Devastate Me
Zenaida Peterson is the author of their first full length book of poetry, Sky Responds to Our Holler. They are a Black southern Quaker mystic and a parent of 5 species living in a queer co-op in Boston. Zenaida is the founding director of Feminine Empowerment Movement Slam (FEMS). They have been on or coached 7 competing teams at national poetry slam competitions, placing in the top 10 each time including Rustbelt’s winning team in 2015. They were accepted into Pinkdoor, Poetry Foundation’s Poetry Incubator and CantoMundo writing retreats. You can find their work at Game Over Books, Pizza Pi Press, Button Poetry, Slam Find and Wusgood Black.