Little Oblivion

Poetry. LITTLE OBLIVION by Susan Allspaw won the 12th Annual Elixir Press Poetry Awards. LITTLE OBLIVION takes place in Antarctica. It is an extraordinary meditation on a frozen oblivion, a place where God must be found under the ice, a place of beauty, danger, and transcendence. Contest judge, Teresa Leo, had this to say about it: "Susan Allspaw's debut collection draws on her work and many trips to Antarctica in luminous poems that sweep panoramically across mesmerizing landscapes while meditating on the human condition through deep and reverent encounters with the natural world. Here is a reflective place where internal and external landscapes intertwine, making it impossible to avoid 'the mirror of the plateau that shows everyone's true face.' LITTLE OBLIVION's Antarctica is a liminal space that resides in between extremes, a place saturated with such whiteness that 'the sky bleeds into the earth / so that a whole body becomes a palindrome.' These exquisitely textured poems capture the essence of Antarctica's stark beauty. 'White will follow me everywhere,' says the speaker in one of the poems. After reading LITTLE OBLIVION, white will follow us, too."