Village Mechanics, by Abigail Carl-Klassen

$16.00

FlowerSong Press is pleased to announce the Winner of the Inaugural Bougainvillea Poetry Prize:

Abigail Karl-Klassen

Village Mechanics

About Village Mechanics, the judges write:

Written from a reservoir of deep experience and a keen observational eye, these poems tell us a little-known narrative of a Mennonite borderlands community. As the speakers struggle with their heritage, religious restrictions, and their place both within and apart from Mexican society, Karl-Klassen asks us to imagine what it means to be alien and to find your family in a world far from where your ancestors first took root, struggling to fit in with different overlapping communities structured upon class and gender differences, colonialism, and religion. Cowboys, apostates, mothers, narcos, and other characters appear within the complexities of this story to share their own histories. We were impressed with the authenticity of the explorations here, with the use of seemingly simple language to achieve intricate poetic motion. We were impressed with the confidence of the narrative, with both its certainty and the doubt it uncovers. We felt ourselves transported into Chihuahua and El Paso, breathing the same air and feeling the same sun as the voices in the collection.

FlowerSong Press is pleased to announce the Winner of the Inaugural Bougainvillea Poetry Prize:

Abigail Karl-Klassen

Village Mechanics

About Village Mechanics, the judges write:

Written from a reservoir of deep experience and a keen observational eye, these poems tell us a little-known narrative of a Mennonite borderlands community. As the speakers struggle with their heritage, religious restrictions, and their place both within and apart from Mexican society, Karl-Klassen asks us to imagine what it means to be alien and to find your family in a world far from where your ancestors first took root, struggling to fit in with different overlapping communities structured upon class and gender differences, colonialism, and religion. Cowboys, apostates, mothers, narcos, and other characters appear within the complexities of this story to share their own histories. We were impressed with the authenticity of the explorations here, with the use of seemingly simple language to achieve intricate poetic motion. We were impressed with the confidence of the narrative, with both its certainty and the doubt it uncovers. We felt ourselves transported into Chihuahua and El Paso, breathing the same air and feeling the same sun as the voices in the collection.

Abigail Carl-Klassen is a poet, writer, researcher, educator, translator, and activist living in El Paso, Texas, with her husband and two children. She grew up in the oil fields of the Permian Basin alongside Old Colony Mennonite immigrants from Mexico and has worked in education, language services, community development, social science research, and agriculture in a variety of contexts across the U.S. and Latin America. She earned an MFA in Bilingual Creative Writing from the University of Texas at El Paso and her work has been published widely in English and Spanish, appearing in ZYZZYVA, Catapult, Cimarron Review, Guernica, Aster(ix) Huizache, and others. She has published two poetry chapbooks, A’int Country Like You (Digging Press) and Shelter Management (dancing girl press). Recordings of her oral history project, “Rebels, Exiles, and Bridge Builders: Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Campos Menonitas of Chihuahua” can be found on the Darp Stories YouTube channel.