ABOUT TELL THIS TO THE UNIVERSE
“I don’t know / how to reach you, and wondering / takes up all my time.” There is an absence at the heart of Tell This to the Universe, Katie Prince’s debut collection—and the obsessive search to find what’s missing propels the reader through a dizzying multiverse of poems that are equal parts sincere, darkly funny, absurd, and devastating. Like moons around faraway planets, the poems orbit the strange and brutal landscapes of longing, alienation, and grief, neither able to escape nor land.
How do we make sense of suffering? Do other worlds exist? Are we each truly alone, or does it just feel that way? These are the kinds of questions Tell This to the Universe is interested in asking. The poems in this collection bounce from physics to philosophy, linguistics to mathematics, fairy tales to science fiction, all in pursuit of a mysterious, ever-elusive you that lurks somewhere out of reach, a black hole at the center of an immense galaxy. It could be said this book is trying to find god—to name it, to hurt it or hold it, to make desperate demands of it—but it’s just as true to say it’s looking for a home, or a family, or an answer to a question it still doesn’t know how to ask.
PRAISE FOR TELL THIS TO THE UNIVERSE
The poems in Tell This to the Universe, Katie Prince’s arresting debut, navigate the failures of human language with paradoxical grace and beauty, revealing the power of words in the exploration of their limitations. They are sublime love letters to ephemerality and decay both vast and infinitesimal, to a reality in which we blink and our “bodies become cities/ become collections of bones and trash and buildings”: a chaotic world moving, changing, and dying faster than our words can hope to capture it.
—Sara Eliza Johnson, author of Bone Map
Katie Prince is a poet who writes exquisitely and breathlessly about the cosmos—its presence in her experience and world of ice and loss. Prince is a fearlessly imaginative poet, a wielder of absurdist humor and heartbreaking lyricism, physics, and philosophical thought. At their heart, her poems contend with loss and with how strange it is that we are here at all, the reality and unreality of it.
—Malena Mörling, author of Astoria
REVIEWS OF TELL THIS TO THE UNIVERSE
“In whatever she does on the page, Katie Prince practices a subtle, omnipresent cadence of syllables so physically pleasing as to cause a blush. Linguistics, science fiction, philosophy, grief—polymathematician at ease—in this debut collection, she wants you to walk away a wiser reader. […]” —Matt Sutherland, Foreword Reviews
“Reading this collection sparked a melancholic response in me, inspiring a shift in how I view existence. Prince draws parallels between human metacognition and the instinctive survival of animals, contrasting our constant questioning with their freedom from existential crises. Through her poems, she conveys both the burden and the beauty of being human, navigating life’s uncertainties with a quiet yearning for purpose. Tell This to the Universe invites readers into a rich, intricate exploration of existence that resonates with both observation and chaos. By engaging with themes of loss, desire, and the ungraspable nature of reality, Prince’s poetry captivates the imagination and encourages us to embrace the profound questions that linger in life’s uncertainties.” —Alexa Diamant, Rowan Glassworks