Venus of the Swamp

By Anna Bayuk

Anna Bayuk’s Venus of the Swamp is a collection of original poems and collages. The collection follows a quest to find beauty in ugliness: in recovery, in childhood, in Florida swamps. It is about loving the things that are hardest to love, and finding a way to forgive yourself for being one of them. The collection explores themes of trauma, feminism, mythology, and love.

Anna is the 2020 South Florida Youth Poet Laureate, presented by the Jason Taylor Foundation as part of their Omari Hardwick bluapple Poetry Network, in partnership with Urban Word NYC, an award-winning youth literary arts and youth development organization headquartered in New York City. Each regional youth poet laureate will automatically qualify for the National Youth Poet Laureate program, which saw the first national winner in 2017.

About the Jason Taylor Foundation

In July 2004, Miami Dolphins legendary Defensive End and Pro Football Hall of Famer, Jason Taylor, established the Jason Taylor Foundation, a 501 (c)(3) organization. The Foundation’s mission is to support and create programs that facilitate the personal growth and empowerment of South Florida’s children in need by focusing on improved health care, education and quality of life.

Since opening its doors, the Jason Taylor Foundation has impacted tens of thousands of children through innovative programming including The Jason Taylor Reading Room, Cool Gear for the School Year, the Jason Taylor Children’s Learning Center, Jason Taylor Scholars and the Omari Hardwick bluapple Poetry Network, among others. For more information on the Jason Taylor Foundation, please visit www.JasonTaylorFoundation.org or follow on Facebook: www.facebook.com/jasontaylorfoundation or Twitter and Instagram: @jtfoundation99 or @bluapplepoetry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: bluapple books
• Release date: Jun 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463517239

Anna Bayuk

Anna Bayuk is the 2020 South Florida Youth Poet Laureate. She was born and raised in Coral Springs, Florida. In her free time, she likes turning small items into jewelry, thoughts into words, and trauma into art. She plans on writing until somebody makes her stop, and even then, it’s iffy. If you’re looking, you can probably find her making metaphors about urban legends, cutting out moths from magazines, and writing herself back together again and again.

Book preview

venus of the swamp

by anna bayuk

Copyright 2020 bluapple books

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This book is available in print at www.jasontaylorfoundation.org.

for mrs. lippel

contents

artwork – breathe easy (2020)

venus of the swamp

hummingbird heart

september hurricane

roommate

the thing about pain

dionysus daughters

artwork – creation (2020)

and god showed snow to the florida girl

internal affairs

hungrier heroes

the bloodiest hymn

artwork – atlas, with friends (2020)

translucent

the happy meal queen

the dreams, revisited

longing tastes like embroidery thread

the hummingbird responds

artwork – drink it up (2020)

acknowledgements

about the author

cover artwork by