Joy Anne Icayan, Harvest and Other Poems

Joy Anne Icayan’s Harvest and Other Poems magisterially composes the architecture of a life through narratives troubled—and ennobled—by desire, ongoingness, illness, and mortality. Spanning from childhood to adulthood, from the 1930s’ Ukraine to present-day Khao San Road, from the privacy of a bedroom to the aftermath of a music festival, Icayan throws a sharp—but no less humane—light through the prism of stories, revealing a vast array of tonalities, from the terrifying darks to the redemptive shades. In her poems, unlikely objects, the past and the present, the contradictions of the human heart share the same body alive with vivid blood: “…a blooming patch of red/ from where the skin touches grass, circular,/ like a tulip in summer.”

Joy Anne Icayan works in the field of human rights. Her work has appeared in Broadsided Press, Columbia Review and Philippines Free Press. Her play ‘Last Ten Minutes’ was staged during the 10th Virgin Labfest.