Gillian Ebersole

The Water Between Us Gillian Ebersole

Born to break our hearts, these exquisite, dusk-blinding, quotidian and canceresque poems seem to bruise easily, seem to breathe the language of queerness with such tender accusation, seem so fearless in their candid vulnerability. How can one not love a collection that has the following lines in its last two stanzas: "god is a highchair toddler/ who laughs when her feet touch the grass"? or ends one of its poems with this ideal cheekiness: "The Spanish word for dress/ is masculine." These raspberry colored poems here are so smart and so transformative that they are capable of teaching anyone's tea kettle how to stop sweating entirely.
- Vi Khi Nao, judge of the Charlotte Mew Prize

The poems in The Water Between Us interrogate gender, love, Catholicism, and poetry itself with a dancer's poise, with grace, with unblinking courage, and with a candor that makes the Catholic confessional look staged. Rarely have I read a debut poetry collection of such depth, such certainty, such polish. In poem after poem, Gillian Ebersole, to paraphrase Emily Dickinson, simply takes the top of my head off. With warmth, openness and a deeply resonant use of the poetic image, she launches here what I'm certain will be a brilliant poetry career.
- Gail Wronsky, author of Under the Capsized Boat We Fly

Gillian Ebersole's brilliant debut collection The Water Between Us sings this young poet's dynamic attention to contemporary concerns-to her physical and philosophical worlds inside and out-with an effusive, forthright emotional intelligence and keen handling of language that is skilled as it is playful. Fierce and vulnerable, taut but never rigid, I'm struck by the depth of longing Ebersole offers up with unabashed honesty in matters of body and heart. There's a fearlessness that sears in admitting trepidation, just as the miraculous explodes with each razor sharp examination of the ordinary. If we write to discover who we are, then let us celebrate a poet willing to ask the difficult questions about spirituality, sexuality, and identity with a rigor and poetic muscularity that succeeds in breaking new ground for claiming multitudes in queer identity. These poems are a triumph, both aesthetically and in establishing Ebersole's agency as an artist and citizen.
-Michelle Bitting, author of Broken Kingdom and The Couple Who Fell to Earth