Excavations: A City Cycle

Selected by Rigoberto Gonzales as the winner of the South Carolina Poetry Book Prize, Excavations: A City Cycle is the first collection of poetry from Jennifer R. Pournelle. Set in seven cities over fifteen years of peace and war, the collection explores the hidden similarities of these locations' seemingly different landscapes and cultures. Beginning in Vienna in the final year before the fall of the Berlin wall, she traces histories and cultures through a reunified Berlin, on to conflict-torn Jerusalem, from there to Moorish-Spanish influenced San Diego, finally ending in post-war Baghdad.

Through vivid explorations of place, Pournelle's narratives bring to the surface defining events, at first seemingly remote, that ripple outward to affect the world beyond. A career soldier turned environmental anthropologist and archeologist, Pournelle is deeply attuned to visions of loss and destruction, as well as to the promise of rebirth and rediscovery. Her poems voice her individual experiences abroad as she sifts--literally and metaphorically--through layers of turbulent history and harsh present circumstances to reveal promises of future recovery.