POETRY COLLECTION (SIR PRESS, 2024)

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PRAISE

“‘You’re more than pretty paradox,’ Natalie Tombasco reminds one girlhood version of herself, while another continues to be ‘a catalyst / for sin in silk & fringe.’ Audaciously playful, linguistically sensual, literarily and pop culturally allusive, these word-wild yet precise investigations into how gender is constructed underpin this collection. MILK FOR GALL asks ‘what we desire most: / is it a cool linen vernacular or to be this / old bitter girl who lives in the blueish / grasp between winter & more winter?’ The answer dervishes throughout this remarkable book.”

Michael Waters, SIR Press Contest Judge

“Natalie Tombasco’s wonderful-strange collection of poems, MILK FOR GALL, is all appetite. The Surreal, the Sublime, the Occult, the Erotic, all merge here, miraculous and malevolent in their intent to upend the obvious. This book recalls, deliciously, Judy Chicago’s classic exhibit THE DINNER PARTY in that we are offered a seat at the table of a myriad of female perspectives. Tombasco’s linguistic aplomb, sonic chops, and devastating takes on postmodern feminism make this astonishing debut a turbo-charged reading experience.”

Cate Marvin, author of EVENT HORIZON

“These poems dazzle, subvert, delight, and bite; their deeply intelligent performances make undeniable the absurdity and weight of prescribed (and preyed-upon) femininities. Lush and percussive, Natalie Louise Tombasco’s MILK FOR GALL made me fall in love with the textures and chimes of words all over again. Here is a book that feels both hyper-contemporary and for the ages. An absolutely glorious debut.”

Gabrielle Bates, author of JUDAS GOAT

“This book is sexy, dangerous, electric. In MILK FOR GALL, Natalie Tombasco flirts with us, smirking at the male gaze and teasing ‘the linguistic G-spot’ through an urgent and playful voice that feels both singular and multifold. This is a poet who knows how to dig into our misogynistic cultural detritus and work it into a subversive bed of ‘bubblegum & oujia,’ cultivating sharp, musical outbursts in poems that demand to be heard. Tombasco’s speakers are ‘girls gone feral’ who grow up and grow smart, reveling in the pleasures of image and language. Here you will meet a lineage of Lolitas, queens, Berthas, and mermaids mingling with the ghosts of Plath, Bishop, O’Hara, and Ginsberg. They will greet you with a dazzling show.”

Rochelle Hurt, author of THE J GIRLS: A REALITY SHOW

“Tombasco offers us this: ‘I do not know who or what / I am made from—if my body can ever be home / to a wheatfield.’ And then she goes on to build that self, that home, word by word. I love the unhinged wildness to these poems, each a highwire act of riot grrrl energy that swirls in a storm of language—ornate, baroque, vernacular, yet unable somehow to mask the deep feeling at the center of each.”

Nick Flynn, author of ANOTHER BULLSHIT NIGHT IN SUCK CITY

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