Description
East Side Solitude
by Asyia Gover
Paper
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East Side Solitude is a mixed poetry and prose journal about love, longing, and liminality in the Pacific Northwest. Asyia Gover reveals the mysterious leading characters through a series of vignettes that trace their tragic romance from the Middle East, to the Far East, to the East and West Coasts of the US. These experimental poems and illustrations dazzle the reader’s appetite as if they were “simmering curry, flame-licked beef, … hot shawarma.” Follow along with this heartfelt collection to find out if the semi-fictional personae in East Side Solitude ever reach reconciliation and justice in the midst of “the obscured otherworld, the / opposite of the train horn, / the ears closed to alarm, / the city subdued with stillness.”
Asyia Gover is a writer, artist, educator, and mediator. Her poetry has appeared in the multimedia collection, SEXT, and anthology zines such as Love and Outrage. She has written and co-directed three stage plays for youth performers. She and her feline familiar, Cora, have made a home in the liminal space between eastern and western Washington State.
Asyia Gover –
Asyia Gover is a writer, artist, educator, and mediator. Her poetry has appeared in the multimedia collection, SEXT (boys who like butterflies, 2011), and anthology zines such as Love and Outrage (2016). She has written and co-directed three stage plays for youth performers, in partnership with Odyssey Middle School. She has taught individual and group classes to all age levels on subjects including cannabis culture, critical pedagogy, and creative language. She completed an Interdisciplinary Concentration at Fairhaven College in 2019, and has also received certifications aligning with Washington State standards in Medical Cannabis Consultation (2017) and Interest-Based Mediation (2023). In March 2024, Asyia received the Washington Mediation Association’s “Rookie of the Year Award” for her development and management of Whatcom County’s first housing-focused mediation program. Her work seeks to capture a queer, third-culture perspective on ordinary life and folk traditions. She and her feline familiar, Cora, have made a home in the liminal space between the Pacific and Inland Northwests. Depending on the season, you might find her harvesting fruits and veggies from the backyard garden, walking along the beach at low tide, curled up with a good book, or spinning donuts in a snowy parking lot. East Side Solitude is her first poetry chapbook.
Asyia Gover –
East Side Solitude is a mixed poetry and prose journal about love, longing, and liminality in the Pacific Northwest. Asyia Gover reveals the mysterious leading characters through a series of vignettes that trace their tragic romance from the Middle East, to the Far East, to the East and West Coasts of the US. These two second-generation Americans navigate the temptations and traps of young adulthood while struggling to stay tender and connected throughout this narrative poetry chapbook. With an introspective and somber tone fitting of Covid-19-era literature, Gover’s work walks the reader through vivid motifs of natural elements to explore themes of self-destruction, regret, loyalty, and reverence. These experimental poems and illustrations dazzle the reader’s appetite as if they were “simmering curry, flame-licked beef, … hot shawarma.” Gover’s vulnerability stands out as a unifying strength of this work, even as she tells the story with tongue in cheek, such as “In those moments, when my lips pressed into your chest, when our left hands connected, or when we linked our breaths, I was casting no spell.” Lest her wounded lovers reminisce in a contextual vacuum, Gover’s slices of life draw attention to addiction, anti-Blackness, colonialism, and housing insecurity as examples of forces that carve out the characters’ destinies. Follow along with this heartfelt collection to find out if the semi-fictional personae in East Side Solitude ever reach reconciliation and justice in the midst of “the obscured otherworld, the / opposite of the train horn, / the ears closed to alarm, / the city subdued with stillness.”
Asyia Gover –
“Asyia Gover’s compact book of poetry, prose, and illustrations is an intimate collection that often returns to phrased imagery of ancestors, scorpions, lilac, spices, skin on soy milk, and skin on skin. The Aroma can transport you into this slice of life during a tumultuous period that highlights and reveals the unique situations everybody found themselves in. The book is a sort of magical-realist journey through the psyche in the throes of the pandemic, where time warped – shrank, and expanded – giving us a glimpse of interpersonal love, decolonization, and searing nostalgia. East Side Solitude has an air of psychedelic melancholy that stays with you long after you have finished the last words.”
– Justin Gallant; educator, activist, and artist