Winner of the 2023 Chapbook Open
Lisbeth White
Part travel-writing, part ecopoetical mythology, part memoir of healing, Lisbeth White’s A Most Natural Thing: An Elemental Memoir was chosen by Michael Martone as the winner of the 2023 Chapbook Open. Split into four chapters—Air, Fire, Water, and Earth—White’s lyrical and formally inventive chapbook is alive with longing as it explores our connection with, and duty to, not just each other, but all the natural world.
You can pre-order A Most Natural Thing: An Elemental Memoir through Red Mare Press.
About the Author
LISBETH WHITE is writer and ritualist living on S’klallam and Chimacum lands of the Coastal Salish in Port Townsend, WA. She has received awards, fellowships, and residencies from VONA, Callaloo, Tin House, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference, and Blue Mountain Center. Her writing has appeared in Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, The Rumpus, Kweli, Apogee, Green Mountains Review, EcoTheo, Split this Rock, and elsewhere. She is co-editor of the anthology Poetry as Spellcasting: Poems, Essays, and Prompts for Manifesting Liberation and Reclaiming Power (North Atlantic Books, 2023). Her debut poetry collection, American Sycamore, was published by Perugia Press in 2022
Praise for Coats
“How do we learn the elements of air, fire, water, and earth? For some, the first naming may be through a book or through an elementary lesson. The way many learn has the taint of control, as if, in learning a name, we might control those elements, which are distant and external to ourselves. This hybrid memoir defiantly troubles this reasoning; here we learn an elemental resonance and timbre through memory, lyric and its myriad shape, sensorially rich practices of attunement, and the revelation of intuitive knowing. Yes, of course, the Vestal Virgin can be guardian of energetic transformation. Yes, of course, the stone is an ancestor. Yes, of course, the water will change its vibration in accordance with prayer and whispered intentions. Of course, fire is alive. This text, too, is alive with sensuality, heat, longing for home within interpersonal relationships and place, connection across borders, loneliness across time, and a grief that is timeless. Several times in reading the text I found myself completely captivated at the skillful interweaving of the personal, the spiritual, the societal critique, the stake of history on the present day, the illness and how we reach for healing and breath at the altar. This is a text of breath and groundedness, a book that could find an honored place on an altar as centering icon on this truth: we are all elementally connected. How can we hold one another more tenderly with that knowledge, because we must?”
—Raina J. León, author of black god mother this body
“In a book that asks how humanity can both “hold such desperate faith” and “punish [its] dreamers,” Lisbeth White’s A Most Natural Thing guides readers deep into a world forged with as much indifference as beauty. Combining memoir, historical inquiry, and travel narratives blooming with lyricism and vulnerability, White’s prose treads the line between meditation and prayer, navigating the triumphs and complexities of identity, community, and belonging. A trip to Mexico at the start of the COVID pandemic brings to light the toll of emotional loneliness and physical isolation. Standing at the edge of Washington State becomes a reflection on whales and their habitat, and ultimately our callousness toward other creatures. And a summer at the Blue Ridge Mountain range questions the extent to which groups of people are accepted in this country. A Most Natural Thing maps out a new literary territory, one that places a profound appreciation not only on the natural world, but on our responsibility toward it. In White’s hands, we come to understand that we should want nothing more than for this life to remain precious.”
—Esteban Rodríguez, author of Before the Earth Devours Us and Lotería
“‘The end of the exhale is the farthest I find myself willing to venture away from the world,’ Lisbeth White writes. ‘Then the hunger for the inhale arises, and calmly ravenous, I seek humanity and its company.’ In her stunning elemental memoir, A Most Natural Thing, Lisbeth’s voice is one that ‘will never tire of seeing the world, of hearing it everywhere.’ Formally inventive, each chapter reflects the elemental force at its core, drawing readers both inward and outward in equal measure—endlessly fascinating, vulnerable, and poignant in its reach. Intimate yet expansive, Lisbeth’s work is led by an intelligence that is ‘intraterrestrial,’ willing to ‘follow the dreaming down into the earth, so deep into the earth as to be near the core of creation.’ Lisbeth’s voice is a prayer—a prayer carried on breath, sometimes a cry, sometimes burning in a moan of pleasure. It’s a voice that seeks itself in the heart of hearts—not just the human heart, but its vast extensions—the heart of the whale, the heart of the mountain. This work is alive and searching in its questions of ancestry, grief, love, and, above all, relationship: to ourselves, to each other, to our past, and to the living world in which we are braided. It reminds us that ‘we only experience grief to the degree we have experienced love.’ We are so fortunate to have this wild little text. It is generous and alive, and its hands are open to bring you inside.”
—Stephanie Adams-Santos, author of Dreams of Xibalba