Literary MagNet

n the past few years Aurielle Marie (they/she) says the manuscript that became their debut poetry collection, Ya Ya (University of Pittsburgh Press, September 2021), grew more “wildly audacious.” After walking away from a book deal that didn’t serve her, she “stopped editing out all these queer or strange or subversive poetic moves.” The final collection, which went on to win the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, is a swirl of texts and voices, with visually inventive typography and poems, some featuring words cascading down the page, layered on top of one another, or pushing beyond the margins. The book subverts and refuses form—“there ain’t / no word to call this what it is,” writes Marie—showing