Jennifer Franklin is a poet based out of New York City currently working on her third book, “If Some God Shakes Your House”, to be published by Four Way Books in 2023. “If Some God Shakes Your House”, is written in the voice of a contemporary Antigone, (the ancient heroine who recognizes her familial duty).

Jennifer says: “Antigone and Creon have represented the struggle between the individual and the state for two millennia. Antigone has been viewed as a cursed woman—part of the people and apart from them. A “homo sacer,” philosophers and writers from Kierkegaard and Hegel to Žižek and Butler have been obsessed with her. I first read Antigone when I was sixteen; questions of power and sacrifice made an impression on me as an obedient girl, raised in a traditional Italian-American family. Antigone's fierce courage has inhabited my imagination for the past thirty years. It wasn’t until my daughter was diagnosed with profound autism and epilepsy (and doctors, friends, colleagues, professionals, and her own father told me that I should not sacrifice myself for her therapy and care) that I understood what Antigone had done and why. A third of the collection are lyric poems written in the voice of a contemporary Antigone who lives in NYC, works, and cares for her disabled daughter. She tries to give her child a semblance of a normal life even as she knows the futility of her project. She extricates herself from her uncle's control as she grapples with her past and the series of choices that led her to her devotion and moral sacrifice. The Antigone persona poems serve as counterpoint to political prose poems provoked by the last administration’s disregard for truth and basic human rights. As I closely followed the news of the last five years, I knew I needed to write a collection that was both personal and political—my own story and a feminist text. The last third of the poems in the collection are sonnets that grapple with the concept of memento mori. My struggle with cancer made me acutely aware of my mortality and gave me a new perspective and appreciation for life. The book as a whole can be read as a struggle for autonomy, an existential analysis of the limits and liabilities of ascribing meaning to one's life, and a love letter to the profundity of devotion, even in the face of death.”

Jennifer Franklin (AB Brown University, MFA Columbia University School of the Arts) has published two full-length collections, most recently No Small Gift (Four Way Books, 2018). Her third book, If Some God Shakes Your House, will be published by Four Way Books in 2023. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Bennington Review, Boston Review, Gettysburg Review, JAMA, The Nation, Paris Review, “poem-a-day” on poets.org, Prairie Schooner, and Rhino. Her poem, “Memento Mori: Pistachios,” was featured in Poetry Society of America’s Poetry in Motion, Rhode Island in February 2021.

Read some of the poems from IF GOD SHAKES YOUR HOUSE here:

The Night Heron Barks

On the Seawall

Blackbird

Valparaiso Review

Plume

Pigeon Pages

JAMA

Broadsided Press

For the past eight years, Jennifer has taught manuscript revision at the Hudson Valley Writers Center where she serves as Program Director. She also teaches in the MFA Program at Manhattanville College. A recent recipient of the City Artist Corps NYFA grant for poetry, she lives in New York City

Please visit Jennifer’s Instagram, Twitter and her website for more information.