Heather Christle
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heatherchristle.bsky.social
Heather Christle
@heatherchristle.bsky.social
3.9K followers 1.1K following 330 posts
Two new books--

IN THE RHODODENDRONS: A Memoir with Appearances by Virginia Woolf

PAPER CROWN: Poems

both out now.

https://linktr.ee/heatherchristle
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heatherchristle.bsky.social
early fall exists; aftertaste, afterthought; seclusion and angels exist; widows and elk exist; every detail exists; memory, memory's light; afterglow exists; oaks, elms, junipers, sameness, loneliness exist; eider ducks, spiders, and vinegar exist, and the future, the future
November 12, 2025 at 11:06 AM
heatherchristle.bsky.social
Two more events this month and then I am done with book-travel until January. Next week Boston (see flier for details), then Madison on Nov 22. (Flier coming soon.) If you live in one of those places I would like to read poems to you with my actual mouth.
Grolier Poetry Book Shop presents Heather Christle Rachel Trousdale & Martha Ronk November 13, 2025 7 pm
November 6, 2025 at 3:22 PM
heatherchristle.bsky.social
accidentally ordered a dinner that matches my book
plate stacked with watermelon tomato and feta next to a pink drink and a copy of PAPER CROWN with flamingos on the cover
September 26, 2025 at 9:28 PM
heatherchristle.bsky.social
NYC TONIGHGHT
BRAVE, UNBODIED SCHEME EDWIN TORRES, HEATHER CHRISTLE, JAMES SHERRY, JOEY DE JESUS, and WENDY XU SEP 26 @ 6:30PM SEAPORT McNALLY JACKSON BOOKS
September 26, 2025 at 1:02 PM
heatherchristle.bsky.social
It's feeling more and more important to be able to gather together in physical space, hope I get to see some of you!

9/26 NYC (McNally Jackson Seaport)
10/4 ATL (Decatur Book Festival)
10/16 Sarah Lawrence
10/30 Hollins University
BRAVE, UNBODIED SCHEME EDWIN TORRES, HEATHER CHRISTLE, JAMES SHERRY, JOEY DE JESUS, and WENDY XU SEP 26 @ 6:30PM SEAPORT McNALLY JACKSON BOOKS DECATUR BOOK FESTIVAL 2OTH ANNIVERSARY Poetry brittny ray crowell HEATHER CHRISTLE Steven Duong RUMINATIONS... Hosted by Maya Marshall SATURDAY OCT. 4| 2:30 PM MARRIOTT HOTEL, SWANTON AMPHITHEATRE SARAH LAWRENCE EVENTS Thursday, October 16 2:00 - 3:00 PM Heather Christle Poetry Craft Talk: What Is the Language Using Us For? In person event; open to the public Heimbold Visual Arts Center Donnelley Theatre Thursday, October 16 6:15 - 7:00 PM Heather Christle Poetry Reading In person event; open to the public Slonim Living Room HOLLINS UNIVERSITY Reading Series: Heather Christle • Green Drawing Room, Main Thursday, October 30, 2025: 7:30 pm - 8:30 pm
September 23, 2025 at 2:40 PM
heatherchristle.bsky.social
Reading about neuroscience leads me to reconfirm that a fundamental quality I value in poetry is its ability to
"perturb those restless proactive seas." Poetry loves to get in the way.
The largest contributor to ongoing neural response is the ceaseless anticipatory buzz of downwards-flowing neural prediction that drives perception and action in a circular causal flow. Incoming sensory information is just one further factor perturbing those restless pro-active seas.
August 18, 2025 at 1:48 PM
heatherchristle.bsky.social
Pretty sure this diagram is making fun of me.
Text box with two arrows pointing up. It says “Philosophical thoughts of a supposedly embodied person”
August 8, 2025 at 9:38 AM
heatherchristle.bsky.social
Any other poet-ish people reading this?
Only 1/4 through but am finding it to be the most helpful text on the subject I have encountered so far.
Cover of Leif Weatherby’s book LANGUAGE MACHINES: CULTURAL AI AND THE END OF REMAINDER HUMANISM
July 22, 2025 at 12:55 PM
heatherchristle.bsky.social
And someday there will be a more complete machine. One's thoughts or feelings during life—or while the machine is recording—will be like an alphabet with which the image will continue to comprehend all experience (as we can form all the words in our language with the letters of the alphabet). Then life will be a repository for death. But even then the image will not be alive; objects that are essentially new will not exist for it. It will know only what it has already thought or felt, or the possible transpositions of those thoughts or feelings. from Adolfo Bioy Casares's THE INVENTION OF MOREL (1940) translated from the Spanish by Ruth L.C. Simms
June 29, 2025 at 2:21 PM
heatherchristle.bsky.social
Kimberly Belflower’s play JOHN PROCTOR IS THE VILLAIN has been met with much-deserved critical rapture (and audience adoration) and I am SOOO excited to talk with her tonight. NYC people—get tickets here: www.eventbrite.com/e/in-store-h...
Variety https://variety.com 'John Proctor Is the Villain' Review: Broadway Play With Sadie Sink Apr 14, 2025 - "John Proctor Is the Villain" is the best play of the season, 一 but even more significantly, it is a feminist masterpiece ...
April 29, 2025 at 6:31 PM
heatherchristle.bsky.social
There is a story I like to tell about Jericho Brown, because it demonstrates (I think) that his superstardom (which brings me GREAT joy) is rooted not just in his remarkable poetry, but his ways of being in the world, of attending to it.
Jericho Brown!
April 22, 2025 at 2:10 PM
heatherchristle.bsky.social
In the name of Goethe I demand they show the new color to a poet* IMMEDIATELY.

Such as me. I am available.
Science Hue new? Scientists claim to have found colour no one has seen before Contested discovery achieved by experiment firing laser pulses into eyes, stimulating retina cells Ian Sample Science editor Their description of the colour is not too arresting - the five people who have seen it call it blue green - but that, they say, does not fully capture the richness of the experience. "We predicted from the beginning that it would look like an unprecedented colour signal but we didn't know what the brain would do with it," said Ren Ng, an electrical engineer at the University of California, Berkeley. "It was jaw-dropping. It's incredibly saturated." The researchers shared an image of a turquoise square to give a sense of the colour, which they named olo, but stressed that the hue could only be experienced through laser manipulation of the retina.
April 19, 2025 at 11:03 AM
heatherchristle.bsky.social
Made a handful of new tiny books for the reading tonight 🌝

7pm at @harvardbookstore.bsky.social with Asale Angel-Ajani
Miniature copies of in the rhododendrons scattered next to a 12 inch ruler.
April 18, 2025 at 1:24 PM
heatherchristle.bsky.social
BOSTON!!! Come out tomorrow night for the first event of In the Rhododendrons book tour!

Totally wild to be back here. I am probably going to cry.
Harvard Book Store PRESENTS A DISCUSSION FEATURING Heather Christle with Asale Angel-Ajani Friday, April 18, 7PM AT HARVARD BOOK STORE CAMBRIDGE, MA LEARN MORE: HARVARD.COM
April 17, 2025 at 4:45 PM
heatherchristle.bsky.social
Hello my book is out today and it is the Top New Release in Dysfunctional Families 🙃
Screenshot from amazon: Heather Christle In the Rhododendrons: A Memoir with Appearances by Virginia Woolf Top New Release in Dysfunctional Families
April 15, 2025 at 2:47 PM
heatherchristle.bsky.social
In one of those strange layerings that life likes to arrange, the first event for RHODODENDRONS is in Harvard Square, which I mention in the book as the place I spent the most time in when I almost-by-accident ran away at age 16.
In The Rhododendrons Events with Heather Christle Friday, April 18th | Cambridge, MA Harvard Bookstore In-conversation with Asale Angel-Ajani Tuesday, April 22nd | Decatur, GA Georgia Center for the Book at Decatur Library In-conversation with Jericho Brown Tuesday, April 29th | New York, NY Books Are Magic In-conversation with Kimberly Belflower Friday, June 27th | lowa City, IA Prairie Lights Books In-conversation with Kaveh Akbar Wednesday, July 2nd | Chicago, IL The Whistler
April 9, 2025 at 12:35 PM
heatherchristle.bsky.social
World’s tiniest announcement:
If you send me a screenshot of your receipt/proof of preorder for IN THE RHODODENDRONS (placed between April 5-April 15), I will mail you a tiny (blank) version of the book. It’s SO small. (Can only send these within the US!)

www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/heath...
Apple with miniature copy of In the rhododendrons My thumb and forefinger holding the miniature book in front of the real one.
April 5, 2025 at 2:23 PM
heatherchristle.bsky.social
Very very happy to be working with the fabulous independent feminist bookstore Charis! If you want to preorder a signed (by me) copy of IN THE RHODODENDRONS you can do it here: www.charisbooksandmore.com/book/9781643...

Also apparently you can request personalization? So that seems nice.
Preorder Your Signed Copy through Charis Books HEATHER CHRISTLE IN THE RHODODENDRONS A MEMOIR WITH APPEARANCES BY VIRGINIA WOOLF HEATHER CHRISTLE AUTHOR OF THE CRYING BOOK ALGONQUIN BOOKS CHARIS Your Independent Feminist Bookstore
April 4, 2025 at 11:20 PM
heatherchristle.bsky.social
From @aaup.bsky.social’s “Against Anticipatory Obedience.” Full text here: www.aaup.org/report/again...
The AAUP's 1956 special investigative report on the anticommunist scare concluded, We cannot censure the justified public interest in colleges and universities, or be unmindful of the extremely difficult task confronting academic administrations that seek to preserve educational and research opportunities in order to serve the general welfare in spite of the suspicions of a public which, at times, has been confused by complicated issues or led astray by demagogic appeals. [highlighted from here to end] The temptation to yield a little in order to preserve a great deal is strong. ... Yet to yield a little is, in such matters, to run the risk of sacrificing all. ..
March 25, 2025 at 6:06 PM
heatherchristle.bsky.social
And lastly Courtney Bush from A MOVIE
I made a movie with my mom. I made a movie in New Jersey. We tried to sell a movie about killing each other, which we wrote but never made. One of our movies had a distributor, but then they changed their mind. We tried to sell a movie about the time Payton stole a wig that belonged to the Broadway production of Hamilton. It took me a long time to be able to think of a movie we could make about something that wasn't true. It took a long time to figure out we could do that. It took a long time to understand that we could make a vampire movie, that it was allowed. I haven't watched any movies in a long time. The Mets are always playing when I get home from work. When I want to make a movie, what I want is to be responsible for what someone else gets to see. When I start a new job with a new family where I'll be taking care of a new baby, the mother always asks me what are some things I do with the babies I care for. I tell her that what I do most of all is narrate. I narrate our time together. I speak to the baby about what we are looking at. tell the baby what he is seeing. A movie can be like that, too. It feels good for a brain to be told what it is seeing, to be directed in its seeing by a generous other. One reason life is hard is that we have to constantly make meaning where there is none in order to proceed in any direction. At least, in a movie, a certain fixed amount of content is framed so that we only have to make meaning out of a much smaller, more specific number of ideas, people, events, places. And we have the knowledge that if we can't, if we don't, or if the meaning we are making by watching is unpleasant, even if we don't decide to get up and turn it off or leave the theater or close the computer, it will end fairly soon no matter what. When I say we make meaning where there is no meaning, I'm not describing something weak or futile. I'm describing something beautiful about us, and tragic. Cover of A Movie by Courtney Bush
March 24, 2025 at 1:44 PM
heatherchristle.bsky.social
Here’s W. J. Lofton, from BOY MAYBE
between boys Look how the walls match your sadness Brown bricks nibbling air. How long have you been sitting there? Slouched in stretched leather Watching twenty-somethings swap promises In long lengths of laughter. You remember Having someone to watch the end of the world with. When Google announces the Alaskan Kelp Forest is dying You mentioned wanting to photograph sea otters: They hold hands to keep from drifting apart. That is no more than the distance between boys Out there sitting thigh-close on a bench. Neither can see your spine curled like a cat while you sneer At the delight they both share. Look at yourself, so sullen. You are sure Nothing about true love is being said. As the boys stand and walk separate ways One looks back as if he's tying a knot In the space between them. You lean back From the window, holding your breath, waiting For the other to do the same. Cover of boy maybe by WJ Lofton
March 24, 2025 at 1:44 PM
heatherchristle.bsky.social
A thread of some poems from books recently arrived in the mail. First up, Lena Moses-Schmitt, a poem from TRUE MISTAKES
Scene with Nude, Helen Frankenthaler, 1952 I have no memories in which I am not impossibly young my experience formless as a flower's or a color's, yellow lights living briefly across a wall Tomorrow I'll think of the me of today and she'll remain illegible, letters on a deflated balloon. I have misjudged accuracy. Is it possible to paint myself so precisely I disappear? Can I remember myself so completely I'm erased? Unraveling to abstraction-a charcoal thatch like the one from which I came- is a method of survival. Whenever I try to understand myself I suffer. What is that long green shape doing there, relaxed on the space I'd call the ground I don't see anything I recognize here Who am I to think I could deliver consciousness back into this room Most true things are also impossible to decipher the green shape What is that green shape resting between two forms we can agree are likely legs- that green shape free, as if it was once part of the body and is now, at last, enlightened Oh god please don't tell me it's life The kind of life only I could live and therefore do not want Cover of true mistakes by Lena Moses-Schmitt
March 24, 2025 at 1:44 PM
heatherchristle.bsky.social
St Anne's Church Kew Green Important NOTICE Tombstones can be DANGEROUS Please do not let your children play on them. Thank you.
March 23, 2025 at 11:50 AM
heatherchristle.bsky.social
I remember when I was writing this I had the idea of March dates in my head because of “I Have a Horse” by Tomaž Šalamun
I Have a Horse I have a horse. My horse has four legs. I have a record player. On my record player I sleep. I have a brother. My brother is a sculptor. I have a coat. I have a coat to keep me warm. I have a plant. I have a plant to have green in my room. I have Maruska. I have Maruska because I love her. I have matches. With matches I light cigarettes. I have a body. With a body I do the most beautiful things that I do. I have destruction. Destruction causes me many troubles. I have night. Night comes to me through the window of my room. I have fun racing cars. I race cars because car racing is fun. I have money. With money I buy bread. I have six really good poems. I hope I will write more of them. I am twenty-seven years old. All these years have passed like lightning. I am relatively courageous. With this courage I fight human stupidity. I have a birthday March seventh. I hope March seventh will be a nice day. I have a friend whose daughter's name is Breditza. In the evening when they put her to bed she says Salamun and falls asleep.
March 18, 2025 at 2:25 PM
heatherchristle.bsky.social
But what begins as a state of exception often augurs a new normality. Coercive powers ceded to the state are rarely handed back, and powers exercised against those at the margins of society invariably permeate more widely. Those who shrug at the deportation of supporters of Palestinian self-determination today may wake up to a knock on their own door in the twilight hours of the not too distant future.
March 15, 2025 at 1:20 PM