News & Events

“Zilka Joseph’s poems wear antennae, soft scales, pincers and curled tails.  Like the creatures that fill this collection, Joseph’s forms are sinuous, elegant—and each poem, in its way, delivers a delicious jolt of venom.  ‘You will get bitten,’ she writes.  ‘That is the nature of the beast.’” -Diane Seuss

“Part bestiary, part foray into mythical conflict and primal fear, Zilka Joseph’s What Dread probes different ‘degree(s) of deadliness.’   Whether victim or devourer, master or voyeur, the speakers in these poems understand that no matter our choices, we will become prey.  One must therefore ‘handle the beautiful danger.’” -Terry Blackhawk

“In this extraordinary new collection, Zilka Joseph writes a visionary poetry that looks deeply into the pain of this world but also explores the imagination and motivation of the poet herself.” -Keith Taylor

Zilka Joseph’s work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Review Americana Gastronomica, Cutthroat, Rattle, Repast and in Cheers To Muses: Contemporary Works by Asian American Women. Her honors include a Zell fellowship, a Hopwood award the Elsie Choy Lee Scholarship (CEW) and several contest prizes. Her first chapbook Lands I Live In (Mayapple Press) was nominated for a PEN America Beyond Margins award. What Dread, her new chapbook (semifinalist in the Finishing Line Press New Women’s Voices contest) has been nominated for a Pushcart. India: A Light Within and Wisdom of the Lotus, her collaborative work with a photographer and an Indian classical dancer has been exhibited at U-M and Copper Colored Mountain Arts, Ann Arbor, as well as other cities, and recently published. Before she moved to the US, she taught for several years in Kolkata, India, where she continues to teach as well as gives readings when she visits. Currently, she is the program manager at the Center for South Asian Studies, U-M, and a poetry instructor for Springfed Arts in Ann Arbor.