Publications
My first book, How to Take a Bullet: And Other Survival Poems (Punk Hostage Press, 2014) won San Francisco State University’s Annual Poetry Center Book Award, judged by Mukta Sambrani.
My second full length poetry collection, Lions Like Us, is forthcoming from Red Light Lit Press in May 2024. Click below for book details, advanced praise and preorder options. Summer tour dates coming soon!
BOOKS
Lions Like Us
Red Light Lit Press (Forthcoming Spring 2024)
"With sparkling, spell-like language, Lions Like Us guides us through love-haunted spaces where desire is alive in the wake of sorrow and loss. These poems are tidal and tender; they feel into tectonic cultural shifts while remaining close to the ‘emblems of dailiness’ that make life meaningful: a mint slipped in a mouth, sweat down the spine, one body leaning into the salt of another. I’m in awe of the quivering architecture of these poems, where nights are ‘dressed in glass’ and the ‘soft / hammer of love’ pulses through the dream’s roar. Hardy is a poet of surprise and precision with an oceanic heart.”
~Brynn Saito, author of Under a Future Sky
“Reading this book is like falling in love, then parting, then returning to the beloved, again and again and again. Reader, enter to weep, to laugh, to find solidarity. Enter to find, in its purest, most intense, most direct and available form, poetry.”
~Matthew Zapruder, author of Story of a Poem
How to Take a Bullet
And Other Survival Poems
Punk Hostage Press (2014)
“A sensuous and persistent vision defines Hollie Hardy’s How To Take A Bullet, one that sees our age of self-help and DIY culture as an aesthetic vehicle for more ritualistic and artful remakings of the self in language and hip codes. Some fires actually do revise the mountains. Here is one.”
~Major Jackson, author of Razzle Dazzle: New & Selected Poems
“With wit and candor, Hollie Hardy writes for her life. "Break up your own little tedium," these poems remind us. With their riffs on existing literature and recurrent crises, Hardy's poems show us what can be gained from trying old tricks in new ways. Hardy shows us how to survive a life lived just over the edge. These poems are playful in the way tussling wolf cubs are playful. They are physical and practical. They are recognizing and revealing strength.” ~Camille Dungy, author of Soil