Alkali Sink - Softcover

Poetry. California Interest. In ALKALI SINK, Stella Beratlis's debut poetry collection, themes of family, loss, and the natural world weave together to create a universe of dichotomies at once dangerous and intimate, walking the line between the catastrophic and the sublime. Beratlis's poems, rooted in her family's Greek culture and the culture of California's Central Valley, deftly maneuver between worlds as familiar and exotic as the mustard greens her immigrant mother gathers along an interstate highway. These poems transform ordinary acts—bird-watching, cooking, cleaning a sofa, taking a road trip—into extraordinary ones. With its startling imagery and touches of wry humor, ALKALI SINK brings us an exciting and original new poetic voice.

Stella Beratlis grew up in a Greek-American family in Northern California. Her work has appeared in Quercus Review, Penumbra, Song of the San Joaquin, In Posse Review, California Quarterly, and other journals, as well as in the anthology THE PLACE THAT INHABITS US: POEMS FROM THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY WATERSHED (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2010). She is coeditor of the collection More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets (Quercus Review Press, 2011). Beratlis is a librarian in Modesto, where she lives with her daughter. ALKALI SINK is her first collection of poems.