https://annalenaphillipsbell.net Anna Lena Phillips Bell Wed, 11 Mar 2026 04:26:20 +0000 https://annalenaphillipsbell.net en https://annalenaphillipsbell.net/Top-header Mon, 07 Sep 2020 00:31:02 +0000 Anna Lena Phillips Bell https://annalenaphillipsbell.net/Top-header Might CouldMarch 2026 Waywiser Books https://annalenaphillipsbell.net/Recent-Work Tue, 29 Jun 2021 17:32:01 +0000 Anna Lena Phillips Bell https://annalenaphillipsbell.net/Recent-Work <img width="1500" height="1658" width_o="1500" height_o="1658" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b84d4cab32e7173e111729585415281ea97d23265d956a9849a0ebb5fbfc7d7d/Bell-One-Lightning-Bug-front-cover.jpeg" data-mid="247108705" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b84d4cab32e7173e111729585415281ea97d23265d956a9849a0ebb5fbfc7d7d/Bell-One-Lightning-Bug-front-cover.jpeg" />One Lightning Bug &nbsp;Artist’s book&nbsp; What do you love? What do you know? A limited-edition, letterpress-printed booklet from St Brigid Press, released to mark the launch of Might Could <img width="1166" height="1631" width_o="1166" height_o="1631" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e9b153de24b57b48fc96883fb8e46f6f96dc9af63c38cff88b5d4b2e84553f10/IMG_3227.PNG" data-mid="245519491" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/e9b153de24b57b48fc96883fb8e46f6f96dc9af63c38cff88b5d4b2e84553f10/IMG_3227.PNG" />Photographs and poems&nbsp;&nbsp;Feature&nbsp; Your body is a reckoning /&nbsp;with its history, is a labor, a blessing, /&nbsp;is to be fed mustard greens and cake. <img width="819" height="1070" width_o="819" height_o="1070" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/aa1d729bb67ffa0cf8fb795fee9971ffd808d7827036c1f15123f057577c633c/IMG_3583.PNG" data-mid="245871442" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/819/i/aa1d729bb67ffa0cf8fb795fee9971ffd808d7827036c1f15123f057577c633c/IMG_3583.PNG" /> “French Walk” &nbsp;Poem&nbsp; I wish you blisterless and wiserAt Literary Hub https://annalenaphillipsbell.net/Blurb Tue, 29 Jun 2021 17:32:28 +0000 Anna Lena Phillips Bell https://annalenaphillipsbell.net/Blurb “In Might Could, Anna Lena Phillips Bell emerges as one of the best lyric poets writing in America today, and simultaneously emerges as an even more profoundly rare poet—a poet who has discovered not only a new song, but a new way of making musicality the first concern of poetry. Hers is an irresistible art.” &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;—Shane McCrae, judge, Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize https://annalenaphillipsbell.net/About Wed, 19 May 2021 15:46:04 +0000 Anna Lena Phillips Bell https://annalenaphillipsbell.net/About About Anna Lena Phillips Bell is a poet, writer, teacher, editor, and printer. Bell is the author of Might Could, winner of the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize, published in 2026 by Waywiser Books. She is also the author of&nbsp;Ornament, winner of the Vassar Miller Poetry Prize, and the chapbook Smaller Songs, from St Brigid Press. Poems appear in journals including the Southern Review, the Georgia Review, Electric Literature, Oxford American, Orion,&nbsp;the Sewanee Review, and Subtropics, and in anthologies including Counter-Desecration: A Glossary for Writing within the Anthropocene and A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia. Other projects include SEND WORD, a letter-writing station, and Forces of Attention, a series of letterpress-printed objects designed to help people use screened devices as they wish. She is also the author of A Pocket Book of Forms, a travel-sized, fine-press guide to poetic forms. Bell is the recipient of a North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship in literature and the winner of the Winter Anthology Award. Her writing and artist’s books have been supported by the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Marble House Project, and Penland School of Crafts. She formerly served as senior editor at American Scientist, covering botany, ecology, and the arts, and in 2013 became editor of Ecotone, the literary magazine that seeks to reimagine place, and Lookout Books, at UNC Wilmington. Under her editorship, Ecotone has won CLMP’s Firecracker Award for Magazines/General Excellence, the AWP Small Press Publisher Award, and multiple grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and has been a finalist for the Whiting Literary Magazine Prize and the ASME Award for Fiction. With Beth Staples, she is coeditor of Making Literary Magazines: A Complete Guide for Editors, Writers, and Students, forthcoming in 2027 from the University of Chicago Press. An associate professor in UNCW’s&nbsp;MFA and BFA programs in creative writing, Bell lives with her family near what is now called the Cape Fear River, and calls ungendered Appalachian square dances in North Carolina and beyond. For a briefer bio &amp; additional photos, visit here.&nbsp; For other proflections, visit Instagram, Ecotone, Bluesky,&nbsp;American Scientist. Site design: Ryan Bloom <img width="900" height="1353" width_o="900" height_o="1353" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0ee10e75a98cf0f80418a5e19d40a9a864f57ec62c8feff78f1ffc80854d1024/Bell-2-sm.jpeg" data-mid="239531466" border="0" alt="Photo: Anastasiia Sliepova" data-caption="Photo: Anastasiia Sliepova" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/900/i/0ee10e75a98cf0f80418a5e19d40a9a864f57ec62c8feff78f1ffc80854d1024/Bell-2-sm.jpeg" /> https://annalenaphillipsbell.net/Might-Could Mon, 17 Nov 2025 03:19:21 +0000 Anna Lena Phillips Bell https://annalenaphillipsbell.net/Might-Could Might Could Winner of the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize, judged by Shane McCrae One of Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Poetry Books of 2026 Featured at the Oxford American Order from Asterism, or order a signed copy from Pomegranate Books “In Might Could, Anna Lena Phillips Bell emerges as one of the best lyric poets writing in America today, and simultaneously emerges as an even more profoundly rare poet—a poet who has discovered not only a new song, but a new way of making musicality the first concern of poetry. Hers is an irresistible art.”—Shane McCrae “Bell’s gems of poems are always as carefully and delicately crafted as her artist’s books.”—Rebecca Morgan Frank, Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Poetry of 2026 Winner of the 20th Anthony Hecht Prize, forthcoming March 2026 from Waywiser Books. To request a review copy or schedule coverage, please contact Summer Wrobel, summerwrobel.pr[at]gmail.com. Might Could&nbsp;considers how to make a life in hurricane country, amid a verdant landscape touched by industrial pollution and the climate crisis. Poems to familiar plants and to everyday objects—marigolds, a vase, a spoon—invite the reader in, while others act as notes to self, offering wry reminders. At the collection’s core is an extraordinary crown, “Bref Doubles for a Late Conception,” imagining a hoped-for child. Even as they carry the knowledge of potential and actual harm, Bell’s profound, tender poems establish an expansive sense of place and play. With precise intonation, uncanny and often exuberant diction, and subtle humor, Might Could contemplates meaningful companionship with one’s own body, with human family, and with the more-than-human world. Find selected poems from the book here. Cover art: Amber Cowan, Fox with Strawberry Stash Sitting in Fern Grove, 2024 <img width="1496" height="2412" width_o="1496" height_o="2412" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a9dc443e57d0d9f19815c6f683ae9b676b09bef39feedc45c72d6b11e3d27608/Might-Could-cover-final.jpg" data-mid="247372463" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a9dc443e57d0d9f19815c6f683ae9b676b09bef39feedc45c72d6b11e3d27608/Might-Could-cover-final.jpg" /> https://annalenaphillipsbell.net/Blurb-copy Wed, 11 Mar 2026 04:10:06 +0000 Anna Lena Phillips Bell https://annalenaphillipsbell.net/Blurb-copy “Anna Lena Phillips Bell is a marvelous poet. But what does it mean to say that? For me, it means the thrill of music, the delight in and love of speech that comes to life on every page of her humane and tender collection, Might Could. . . . Bell is a talent to reckon with. Open this marvelous book and begin by trusting your ear, dear reader.” &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;—Ilya Kaminsky https://annalenaphillipsbell.net/Top-header-1 Sun, 29 Aug 2021 22:10:02 +0000 Anna Lena Phillips Bell https://annalenaphillipsbell.net/Top-header-1 Books https://annalenaphillipsbell.net/Books Thu, 20 May 2021 00:56:59 +0000 Anna Lena Phillips Bell https://annalenaphillipsbell.net/Books <img width="1496" height="2412" width_o="1496" height_o="2412" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a9dc443e57d0d9f19815c6f683ae9b676b09bef39feedc45c72d6b11e3d27608/Might-Could-cover-final.jpg" data-mid="247372470" border="0" data-scale="100" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a9dc443e57d0d9f19815c6f683ae9b676b09bef39feedc45c72d6b11e3d27608/Might-Could-cover-final.jpg" /> Might Could Waywiser Books, March 2026 Winner of the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize, judged by Shane McCraeOne of Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Poetry Books of 2026Featured at the&nbsp;Oxford American Order from Asterism, or order a signed copy from Pomegranate Books “In Might Could, Anna Lena Phillips Bell emerges as one of the best lyric poets writing in America today, and simultaneously emerges as an even more profoundly rare poet—a poet who has discovered not only a new song, but a new way of making musicality the first concern of poetry. Hers is an irresistible art.”—Shane McCrae Might Could considers how to make a life in hurricane country, amid a verdant landscape touched by industrial pollution and the climate crisis. Poems to familiar plants and to everyday objects—marigolds, a vase, a spoon—invite the reader in, while others act as notes to self, offering wry reminders. At the collection’s core is an extraordinary crown, “Bref Doubles for a Late Conception,” imagining a hoped-for child. Even as they carry the knowledge of potential and actual harm, Bell’s profound, tender poems establish an expansive sense of place and play. With precise intonation, uncanny and often exuberant diction, and subtle humor, Might Could contemplates meaningful companionship with one’s own body, with human family, and with the more-than-human world. <img width="1500" height="1658" width_o="1500" height_o="1658" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/18ccf3c95c093de0fb09306aa00c458b0a89acdfec55197ff10c3c5eddcda174/Bell-One-Lightning-Bug-front-cover.jpeg" data-mid="247108588" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/18ccf3c95c093de0fb09306aa00c458b0a89acdfec55197ff10c3c5eddcda174/Bell-One-Lightning-Bug-front-cover.jpeg" /> One Lightning BugSt Brigid Press, March 2026To purchase: St Brigid Press&nbsp; A limited-edition, letterpress-printed booklet featuring a poem from Might Could. The text is an almost-echo poem illuminating the gleam and gift of fireflies’ lives and the seemingly irreparable loss of their presence in our own. St Brigid Press launches this booklet in celebration of Bell’s full-length collection, Might Could (Waywiser Books, 2026), winner of the 2026 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize. Hand-set type letterpress printed in three colors, hand-sewn. Edition of 144. <img width="400" height="600" width_o="400" height_o="600" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5feab3cef4a9c7bf0b26840eda9b8d88f71a45c12e2056357be9cb3fda983988/bell-ornament.jpeg" data-mid="114323500" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/400/i/5feab3cef4a9c7bf0b26840eda9b8d88f71a45c12e2056357be9cb3fda983988/bell-ornament.jpeg" /> OrnamentWinner, Vassar Miller Poetry PrizeA Largehearted Boy Favorite Poetry Collection of 2017University of North Texas PressTo purchase: Signed copy / UNT Press / IndieBound / Bookshop In this debut collection, Anna Lena Phillips Bell explores the foothills of what is now called the eastern US, and the old-time Appalachian tunes and Piedmont blues she was raised to love. With formal dexterity—in ballads and sonnets, Sapphics and amphibrachs—the poems in Ornament traverse the permeable boundary between the body and the natural world. “Like the best fiddle and banjo duets, Bell’s poems are both simple and complex, breezy and profound, powerful and authentic. Reading her book gave me the same feeling I get when I hear a modern master—say, John Hermann on the banjo, or Rhys Jones on the fiddle: here is a living artist who, through passion, talent, and caring about craft, is able to take us inside the music.”—Rus Bradburd, the Old-time Herald “Anna Lena Phillips Bell’s love of old-time music is matched by her love of old-time prosody, and Ornament is, too, a tribute to the music-making forms of our poetry, of which these pages offer an astonishingly rich catalog. If you keep an eye out, as Auden hoped his ideal reader would, for ‘curious prosodic fauna,’ you’ll find ballads and sonnets, blank verse and terza rima, sapphics and amphibrachs, as well as the occasional ghazal, pantoum, sestina, rondeau, and rondelet. And in this picker’s hands, those old tunes all sound gloriously new.” —Geoffrey Brock “Ornament is a stunning book, gossamer and untamed.”—Molly Peacock Additional reviews of Ornament&nbsp; Book Notes playlist, Largehearted Boy Request an examination copy for course adoption <img width="1424" height="1748" width_o="1424" height_o="1748" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3503954de150c381764ef6b6f5dbcc269506184f12ed38b80a056a19f1b54401/Smaller-Songs-cover---photograph-by-Emily-Hancock.jpg" data-mid="112431035" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/3503954de150c381764ef6b6f5dbcc269506184f12ed38b80a056a19f1b54401/Smaller-Songs-cover---photograph-by-Emily-Hancock.jpg" /> Smaller Songs St Brigid Press To purchase: St Brigid Press [SOLD OUT!&nbsp;Pomegranate Books has a few copies as of Nov. 2022] What news can a ballad tell? And what news is hidden in the footnotes to a 1957 edition of English and Scottish ballads? Anna Lena Phillips Bell's Smaller Songs carries strange and delightful tidings, in poems made entirely from word and phrase banks transcribed from the footnotes of English and Scottish Ballads, edited by Robert Graves. Glosses on words and phrases from ballads such as “The Golden Vanitie,” “The Demon Lover,” and “The Unquiet Grave” are rendered new in Bell's poems, which upend ideas of gender and power embedded in the originals. By turns epigrammatic, enigmatic, and wryly funny, these smaller songs sing fiercely of wonders within and without. “Smaller Songs, and indeed they are—short sweet bits of poetry borrowed from old ballads, that instantly paint a picture and strike a familiar note—to be read over and over again. “First, housewifely tasks; then, / much ale” and “Defied book-knowledge— / taught the garden” were two of my favorites among many. The lovely woodcuts by Molly Stouten are a perfect accompaniment to this wonderful little book.” — Alice Gerrard “The small isles of lyric are stepping stones in a rough and windy world. Come out of the wind and careless language into the shelter of these songs. A tender collection from an exquisite small press.”—Hannah VanderHart, EcoTheo Review “Smaller Songs harvests, disassembles, and re-sows the footnotes of English and Scottish Ballads to grow a wild crop of new poems that are rooted to the past and yearning forward into the present, as all the best folk songs do. Through Bell’s blend of ethnological care and poetic vibrancy, Smaller Songs employs Graves’s words to explore the labors of women, of refugees, and, ultimately, of hope.”—GennaRose Nethercott, Southern Review of Books interview, “Anna Lena Phillips Bell on Making New Songs from Old” “In both its words and letterpress craftsmanship, Bell’s Smaller Songs is a pocket-sized gift of grace that reminds us to listen for history’s whisper.”—Ned Balbo, Literary Matters Work in Anthologies <img width="898" height="1344" width_o="898" height_o="1344" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1147de283a778f6ac873436bba211cbcd6a1c3a0bc6b08b174fc04189434e6ec/The-Nature-of-Our-Times.png" data-mid="240715926" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/898/i/1147de283a778f6ac873436bba211cbcd6a1c3a0bc6b08b174fc04189434e6ec/The-Nature-of-Our-Times.png" /> The Nature of Our Times: Poems on America’s Lands, Waters, Wildlife, and Other Natural WondersPaloma Press / Poets for Science <img width="578" height="863" width_o="578" height_o="863" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e67d52e5626b26a846f594c0bc9c615f986a2e2335a0a283064b8ef012de1d09/Attached-to-the-Living-World.jpg" data-mid="229390802" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/578/i/e67d52e5626b26a846f594c0bc9c615f986a2e2335a0a283064b8ef012de1d09/Attached-to-the-Living-World.jpg" /> Attached to the Living World:A New Ecopoetry AnthologyTrinity University Press <img width="290" height="400" width_o="290" height_o="400" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b10b04b4860de555ca1870635428f2ad56bb33d3263195a44462077daee506fb/Oct17-Literary-Field-Guide-H400.jpeg" data-mid="121831019" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/290/i/b10b04b4860de555ca1870635428f2ad56bb33d3263195a44462077daee506fb/Oct17-Literary-Field-Guide-H400.jpeg" /> A Literary Field Guide to Southern AppalachiaUniversity of Georgia Press <img width="259" height="400" width_o="259" height_o="400" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c1a690a6aaa5554299bb8ee4d84dd790f23917495a7137c569af602e80a009a4/Oct17-Counter-Desecration-H400.jpeg" data-mid="121831003" border="0" data-scale="89" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/259/i/c1a690a6aaa5554299bb8ee4d84dd790f23917495a7137c569af602e80a009a4/Oct17-Counter-Desecration-H400.jpeg" />Counter-Desecration: A Glossary for Writing within the AnthropoceneWesleyan University Press <img width="331" height="500" width_o="331" height_o="500" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/cb26e0b633fe255dbde8fabc5759bd464d036f1ac8677c84308ba50c04ef2661/The-American-Sonnet-9781609388713.jpg" data-mid="162903220" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/331/i/cb26e0b633fe255dbde8fabc5759bd464d036f1ac8677c84308ba50c04ef2661/The-American-Sonnet-9781609388713.jpg" />The American Sonnet: An Anthology of Poems and Essays University of Iowa Press <img width="267" height="400" width_o="267" height_o="400" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a6ab8dbcafa55e62d65f7f6070bbc934383afce4de0a9538fdb1a3572cba2a27/Oct17-Gracious-H400.jpeg" data-mid="121831004" border="0" data-scale="92" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/267/i/a6ab8dbcafa55e62d65f7f6070bbc934383afce4de0a9538fdb1a3572cba2a27/Oct17-Gracious-H400.jpeg" />Gracious: Poems from the 21st Century SouthTexas Tech University Press <img width="318" height="400" width_o="318" height_o="400" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fa691bfa089f7139a87e72d27e28efad30988e8946a391fe793333a19b614326/Big-Energy-Poets.jpeg" data-mid="114048770" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/318/i/fa691bfa089f7139a87e72d27e28efad30988e8946a391fe793333a19b614326/Big-Energy-Poets.jpeg" />Big Energy Poets: Ecopoetry Thinks Climate Change BlazeVOX Books <img width="900" height="1260" width_o="900" height_o="1260" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a81792cc529fd5aeba2498234215877f3736d5aed9f49ddbd19680b7e84f857f/mid-south-sonnets.jpg" data-mid="188449438" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/900/i/a81792cc529fd5aeba2498234215877f3736d5aed9f49ddbd19680b7e84f857f/mid-south-sonnets.jpg" /> Mid/South Sonnets Belle Point Press <img width="1000" height="1254" width_o="1000" height_o="1254" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3e134b29308aacacdb20587d0086e10ed4f29c0a5acc814afd5e257b972ebcf5/Wild-Gods.jpg" data-mid="119862710" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/3e134b29308aacacdb20587d0086e10ed4f29c0a5acc814afd5e257b972ebcf5/Wild-Gods.jpg" />Wild Gods: The Ecstatic in Contemporary Poetry and ProseNew Rivers Press https://annalenaphillipsbell.net/Blurb-4 Wed, 11 Mar 2026 04:26:20 +0000 Anna Lena Phillips Bell https://annalenaphillipsbell.net/Blurb-4 “I love these poems by Anna Lena Phillips Bell, and I trust you will too. Love her grounded attention to people and plants and place. Love how she worries and wonders about the living world. Love how her phrases sing and how her lines dance over these pages. . . . I’m delighted Might Could has arrived.” &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;—Camille T. Dungy https://annalenaphillipsbell.net/Top-header-2 Tue, 29 Jun 2021 19:07:01 +0000 Anna Lena Phillips Bell https://annalenaphillipsbell.net/Top-header-2 Writing