“Sensual, ephemeral, dream-like. . . . Humienik’s is a powerful debut, a conundrum as rich and arresting as it is sorrowful and celebratory and nuanced.”

—The Associated Press

“Raw and intimate, these are refreshingly candid poems.”
—Publisher’s Weekly

To whom do we belong, and at what cost? Patrycja Humienik’s debut poetry collection, We Contain Landscapes, is haunted by questions of desire, borders, and the illusion of national belonging. Bringing music and rich sensory detail to the page, these poems attend to the inextricable link between our bodies and the land. Over six ruminative and lush sections, they survey place and memory, both intergenerationally and through emotional bonds with other immigrant daughters. 

Weaving in letters, innovative forms, and meditations on devotion, sexuality, and self-deceit, We Contain Landscapes introduces a speaker who “will not turn away from the ache of this world.” For every reader who also harbors a voracious longing to encounter infinite landscapes and ways of being, this incisive collection dreams toward a more expansive idea of kinship—of becoming beloved to one another and ourselves.

“Patrycja Humienik picks up where the great Polish poets of the twentieth century left off, writing of exile, war, fragmented families, and grief for a ruined environment. And yet, her mind is utterly contemporary and new, searching and witty, always striving towards a politics of solidarity with the Other––the reader, the ancestors, the daughters of immigrants. The poet’s wondrous imagination flows like water across these pages, picking up the peculiar and astonishing facts of life on earth, like ‘kiwis ripening in early December,’ a ‘sky’ like ‘a cicatrix,’ ‘the presence / of screens’ that shape memory, or ‘eyelashes beating / against time.’ We Contain Landscapes introduces a gorgeous, determined, and vibrant new voice to American poetry, a voice that dances with, exults in, and blurs the boundaries of the lyric.”

—Aria Aber, author of Good Girl

“In We Contain Landscapes, Patrycja Humienik illuminates to us the sticky insides of longing, and the crisis of returning to ourselves in the process of returning home. This collection speaks to the heart of the immigrant daughter, and the daughter responds: yes, I speak to you / in sweat.”

—Camonghne Felix, author of Dyscalculia

“Daughter of immigrants, Patrycja Humienik confronts the agonizing betrayals of nation-states, as well as the pressures of sexuality, the obliterating lure of the internet. She writes with a physicality that is utterly mesmerizing. Shot through with radiance and self-possession, Humienik’s poems are reminders that life at the edge of exorbitant longing can feel more free, more alive.”

—Joanna Klink, author of The Nightfields

“Here are intensely beautiful poems that arrange perception and then rearrange it.”
—Victoria Chang, author of With My Back to the World

Read more about the book & order your copy here. <3

Photo courtesy of Nicholas Nichols.

SELECT POETRY PUBLICATIONS

“Saint Hyacinth Basilica” in The New Yorker

“Eros and Sorrow” in Poetry Northwest

“On Belonging” in The Hopkins Review

“How American,” in Sixth Finch

“Archival,” in Michigan Quarterly Review

“Beloved,” in The Atlantic

“The Last Anchoress” in Gulf Coast (print)

“Objects” in Bellingham Review

“I Can’t See My Insides” & “On Kissing” in The Los Angeles Review

“On Self-Deceit” in Shenandoah (best viewed on web not mobile)

“Dig a Cave Into the Future” in SAND Journal Berlin (print)

“A Kind of Weather” in The Adroit Journal

“Aubade in Which I Linger” & “Recurring” in Hayden’s Ferry Review (online & print)

“Letter to Another Immigrant Daughter” in TriQuarterly

“An Anchor is An Argument” in 128 Lit

“Reading Szymborska at Friday Harbor” in Waxwing & on The Slowdown podcast

“because horse is the closest i can get to it” in The Maine Review

“we” in Poetry Northwest (print)

“voracious” in Southeast Review (online & print)

PROSE

“Solid Objects,” Hayden’s Ferry Review

“Joanna Klink’s ‘On Kingdoms,’” Guest post for Devin Kelly’s Ordinary Plots

“Unlearning My Immigrant Mother’s Ideas of Beauty,” Catapult

FEATURES

Interviews and WCL features in Write or Die, Electric Lit, Liminal Transit Review, Only Poems, Cap Times Madison & more

“Crossover and mess and fluidity” — Interviewed by Guest Editor Siew David Hii for Shenandoah

“Devotion & Desire” — Interviewed by E.J. Koh for Jack Straw’s SoundPages

“Poet of the Week” Feature in Brooklyn Poets

READINGS & EVENTS

2025 BOOK TOUR DETAILS HERE

Past:

June 2024—Mnemosynes Reading Series, Conversation with Gabrielle Bates, Rerenga Wines, Paris, France

May 2024—Brooklyn Poets Festival, New York

May 2024—Reading with Chessy Normile and S. Fey, Room of One’s Own Books, Madison, WI

February 7-10, 2024—AWP Offsite Readings, Kansas City

April 14, 2023—An Evening of Poetry at Haymarket House, Chicago

April 16, 2023—Sunday Reading Series, Hungry Brain, Chicago

March 9-11, 2023—AWP Offsite Readings with Brooklyn Poets & The Seventh Wave, Seattle

January 21, 2023—Gabrielle Bates’ Judas Goat Pre-Release Party at the Royal Room, Seattle

Festival Poet at the October 2022 Dodge Poetry Festival including readings & conversations alongside Quenton Baker, Yusef Komunyakaa, Shara McCallum, Patrick Rosal, Han VanderHart, Arisa White & more

September 2022—Book Marks with Luther Hughes at Common AREA Maintenance, Seattle

September 2022—Brooklyn Poets Staff Picks (virtual)

June 2022—Ottawa’s Tree Reading Series (virtual)

April 2022—Mercy Street Reading Series (virtual)

November 2021—The New Third World Reading Series at Barbès, Brooklyn

November 2021—Jack Straw Fellows at Seattle Public Library (virtual)

October 2021—LitCrawl at Hugo House, Seattle

July 2021—Brooklyn Rail Radical Poetry Reading (virtual)

May 2021—Jack Straw Fellows Reading, Seattle (virtual)

February 2020—Uncertainty of Light, Tacoma

December 2019—Margin Shift: Friends in Poetry, Seattle

October 2019—LitCrawl Seattle

CONVERSATIONS WITH POETS

in The Rumpus:

Before the First Book: A Roundtable Discussion with Sarah Ghazal Ali, Erin L. McCoy & Tawanda Mulalu

Before the First Book: A Roundtable Discussion with Steven Espada Dawson, Elisa Gonzalez & Gaia Rajan

Before the First Book: A Roundtable Discussion with Gabrielle Bates, Itiola Jones & Erin Marie Lynch

UW Public Lectures:

An Evening with U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo