Tantrums in Air

"These poems are stitched with lush, unforeseen textures and unexhausted time. …They make the ghost of John Keats smile in ecstasy. Raymond Roussel would have kept this collection under his pillow." —Lucy Ives

Emily Skillings’ highly anticipated second collection of poems, Tantrums in Air, is a wild romp through verbal reality, marking her as one of contemporary poetry's shining stars of humor, insight and edge. It follows her first collection, Fort Not, published by the Song Cave in 2017, which Publishers Weekly called a "fabulously eccentric, hypnotic and hypervigilant debut." Skillings writes through various poetic forms. Featuring a ballet in four acts—"part ghost, part sponge / a lump of pure refusal"—addresses to past loves—"I circle the circle / Of a compact mirror, open"—and an unconventional treatise on education, Tantrums in Air is smart and honest, reinventing both what’s possible and what we should expect from poetry.
Emily Skillings received her MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts. Her recent work has been featured in Harper’s, Poetry, Granta and the New York Review of Books.