Donika Kelly’s first collection of poems is a compendium of beasts and takes its name Bestiary from the form popularized in Medieval times.
Kelly’s work translates trauma, love, and being through the vehicles of nature, mythology and persona. Kelly's poems are prisms that refract the vast and the intimate, the human touch and the natural world – love poems are to lovers and creatures describing the real as imaginary, or the imaginary as the real.

Donika Kelly (*1983 in Los Angeles, lives and works in New York) published Bestiary with Graywolf Press in 2016. The book has won numerous literary awards, including the Hurston/Wright Award for Poetry and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Kelly was also long listed for the National Book Award for Poetry. In 2017 Kelly’s chapbook AVIARIUM was published by fivehundred places, the publishing imprint of Jason Dodge

Please take a listen to Donika's poem read, the 16th on the Slowdown, a new podcast made by the current Poet laureate of the United States, Tracey K Smith.


 https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-slowdown/id1437839593 