Dear Readers,

I’m very excited to announce that my debut poetry collection, Opium and Ambergris, will be published by KSU Press on September 20th, 2024. The work was selected by poet Marilyn Chin, chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, for the 2023 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize. The poems are a culmination of 12 years of writing and deal with the loss of my brother to a heroin overdose and my mother’s subsequent mental illness. In her introduction Chin writes, “An unbearable grief unsettles us through multiple vignettes of overdoses, psyche wards, suicide attempts, and failing relationships. Colin Dekeersgieter’s book is a visceral and immersive experience, with lines that linger in the mind long after reading.”

You can read more about the collection and, if you’re so inclined, preorder the book by clicking this link.

“These poems turn the copious glint and glimmer of language into resonant extensions of its themes. Thinking in this book is refreshingly physical and profoundly ethical in upholding the imagination as our great citadel of healing.” – Major Jackson