Alicia Rebecca Myers
Alicia Rebecca Myers
I'm Becca, a poet and essayist. I received my MA in English from the University of Georgia and my MFA in Creative Writing from New York University. Now I live in Ithaca, NY with my poet husband and son.
I have had three poems published in the Best New Poets series: "G Day" was selected by Anna Journey for Best New Poets 2023, "Winter Solstice" was selected by Kaveh Akbar for Best New Poets 2021, and "The Last Travel Agent" was selected by Tracy K. Smith for Best New Poets 2015. My first full-length manuscript, Warble, was a finalist for the 2023 Akron Poetry Prize and the winner of the 2024 Birdy Poetry Prize. Warble will be publised by Meadowlark Press in fall 2024.
My chapbook of poems inspired by my son, My Seaborgium, was published by Brain Mill Press as part of their Mineral Point Chapbook Series. You can order it here.
I have essays online at Creative Nonfiction, Entropy, The Rumpus, and Brain, Child Magazine, among other places.
I won the 2021 Poetry in Flight competition sponsored by the Syracuse Airport and the Syracuse Downtown Writers Center for my poem "Long-Haul."
You can follow my efforts at parenting, writing, and open water swimming on Instagram @aliciabecca.
What readers are saying about My Seaborgium:
"I admire the way the book refuses an easy teleology, from loss to a birth, which is a more familiar narrative, and the way the poems complicate experience."
-- Nicole Cooley, author of Of Marraige
"Within each poem, the yin and yang, 'to be both drift and manifold' as in the poem '24 Weeks,' or 'dually as wave and particle' in '33/34 Weeks.' This poem, in particular, describes vividly that duality that comes of being both woman and mother—to be fiercely independent yet so dependent on a life that is so dependent on you. 'Pain tolerance isn’t the same as pain threshold' is a line that stayed with me long after the initial read, perhaps serving as the centrifugal force from which the rest of the book spins."
-- Cathryn Cofell, author of Stick Figure with Skirt
HOSTESS
If what happens after we die is the same as
what happened before then what
must count is the middle. Like the cream filling
in a Twinkie, how did I get here?
I watch you practicing skills.
I could swoop and holler
till the cows sidle up
to your chub. Here is the church, here is
the crutch of my body keeping
you horizontal only
so long. Hello, how many
in your party? Once in your high chair
it's drop giraffe get giraffe ad
nauseam. Draw me a bath
of dissolvable packing peanuts
and later, I'll tell you the story of how
I rolled around in a mail truck full of other
people's letters, I was that happy
to be your mother.
-- Alicia Rebecca Myers, from My Seaborgium
“The poems of My Seaborgium utilize metaphor in an attempt to account for the beauty that emerges from our moments of greatest grief. . . . Even through the pain, Myers’s speaker struggles to pay attention, to unfold that pain in ways that feel particular and personal.”
-- Kiki Petrosino, author of Hymn for the Black Terrific