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THE NEW WORLD (2020)

The New World is my second collection of poetry and essays, published in October 2020 by Black Ocean.

You can purchase a copy directly from Black Ocean, or purchase a signed copy directly from me. You can occasionally find copies at Powell’s Books, Abe Books, and Amazon.

A hybrid collection of poetry and prose, The New World follows the attempts, failures, and re-attempts at understanding and articulating an era of immense social upheaval, political corruption, and environmental consequence. In five distinct sections, the book refracts, explores and investigates these global themes through the realm of the personal and private. Old journals and notes are revisited as a way of understanding the self and its various revisions and mistakes. 

The New World tells the story of escapism and arrival, growth and decay, and despair and optimism as they occur, often simultaneously, within the mind of our narrator. The book asks, “How do you write poems in a country like this?”, inviting every reader to take stock of themselves, and to reassess the ways “One human world / [empties] completely / into the bigger one.”

"Kelly Schirmann's The New World begins with the idea that what we need right now isn’t poetry, but livable wages, ethical accountability, and less consumer-friendly “revolutions” from the arts. It’s an exhortation that doesn’t allow her work to be read with any kind of aesthetically-cushioned escapism, like most poetry does. Because of this, her New World is a heartbreaking alarm. These poems are loud, baying, and bend new light into my eyes. She’s made a siren beautiful. I have no idea how, but I love it." -- Jon-Michael Frank, author of Dark Garbage

"What amazes me about Kelly’s latest work is how it begins in sense-making, argument, discourse, and section by section deconstructs itself so that only the essences of language remain—a fragment here, the lone image of the mythic apple there. It gives me a feral feeling, like language is being dissolved of its centuries of pollution and toxic chalk and returning to a wilderness of its own ungovernable energy. It’s a book that’s here to do that work." -- Danniel Schoonebeek, author of Trébuchet and American Barricade

BOYFRIEND MOUNTAIN (2014)

Boyfriend Mountain is a split poetry collaboration, a conversation about lust and nature and the human experience by Kelly Schirmann and Tyler Brewington. This book, originally published as part of Poor Claudia’s Signature Series, is equal parts investigation and confessional.

This book is no longer in print.

A PDF download is available at boyfriendmountain.com.

Selected praise:

“Reading Tyler Brewington & Kelly Schirmann’s split-book Boyfriend Mountain is like the best sleepover ever, that late-night freakout time when the real gets giddy & Truth-or-Dare demands only truth, more truth & forever truth. The two individually written halves of the book use the same title, Boyfriend Mountain, & as Brewington collects moments of attention & knotting & scattering into a disjunctive & projective wisdom, Schirmann deals & redeals the cards of her experiences, not to compete but to show how each hand can be tragic & beautiful. Both poets work in a confessionalism that owes as much to Adrienne Rich & O'Hara as it does to Catullus & entwined within one spine these two demonstrate the permeability of our experiences & relationships, how we climb & fall off these cliffs of love & fear & bodies & joy.” — Mathias Svalina, author of The Wine-Dark Sea

"Boyfriend Mountain is a book where falling in love also means confronting your own mortality. It's a place where the joy of domesticity and the wrath of the apocalypse are part of the same thought. Where boyfriends aren't really boyfriends, but the idea of what a boyfriend might represent.” — Joshua James Amberson, The Portland Mercury