
Are You There
Samantha Fain(Author)
Bad Betty (Publisher)
Published on 25. April 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
72 pages
978-1-913268-54-1 (ISBN)
Description
Featured in the Guardian's best recent poetry
"These poems are like Neosporin; they sting and they heal." Raphael Bob-Waksberg, creator of BoJack Horseman
In Are You There, Indiana poet Samantha Fain refracts contemporary melancholia into iridescent lyricism. Fain delights in breaking rules, the serendipity of autocorrect incantations, testing how far, in space and time, a connection will travel, and where it ends - quoting sources including Schroedinger, Ask Jeeves and Kim Kardashian. In Fain's haunting poetics, grief, mania, pop culture, faith, quantum physics and digital relationships collide, alive with the spiky humour of brutal self-awareness, aglow with startling new language.
"Readers may recognise the title from the Netflix idle screen. Its combination of technology and vague distress is in keeping with the explorations of the self on show in this wittily knowing work." The Guardian
"The most lyrically provoking debut I've ever read. Fain articulates the complex contemporary manifestations of grief and desire, while still giving us possibility instead of foreclosure." C.T. Salazar, Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking
"These poems are like Neosporin; they sting and they heal." Raphael Bob-Waksberg, creator of BoJack Horseman
In Are You There, Indiana poet Samantha Fain refracts contemporary melancholia into iridescent lyricism. Fain delights in breaking rules, the serendipity of autocorrect incantations, testing how far, in space and time, a connection will travel, and where it ends - quoting sources including Schroedinger, Ask Jeeves and Kim Kardashian. In Fain's haunting poetics, grief, mania, pop culture, faith, quantum physics and digital relationships collide, alive with the spiky humour of brutal self-awareness, aglow with startling new language.
"Readers may recognise the title from the Netflix idle screen. Its combination of technology and vague distress is in keeping with the explorations of the self on show in this wittily knowing work." The Guardian
"The most lyrically provoking debut I've ever read. Fain articulates the complex contemporary manifestations of grief and desire, while still giving us possibility instead of foreclosure." C.T. Salazar, Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bad Betty Press
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 129 mm
Thickness: 6 mm
Weight
100 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-913268-54-1 (9781913268541)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Person
Samantha (Sam) Fain is a poet from Indiana. Her chapbook Coughing Up Planets debuted with VA Press in March of 2021. Her microchapbook, sad horse music, debuted with The Daily Drunk in May of 2021. Catalina Ponce of Cicada Editora translated this work, and Música de Caballo Triste was published in 2024. Sam co-edited Kiss Your Darlings: A Taylor Swift Anthology with Olney Magazine in 2022. Are You There is her debut full-length collection. Find her at samanthafain.com.