“With rhythms and nods to Shakespeare and the tradition of storytelling and fable—and yet entirely alive and contemporary, entirely her own—Niki Tulk’s O is a book that readers will consume breathlessly in one sitting, and then again and again. This is an urgent book, capturing what it means to experience, withstand, and witness sexual violence, and how survivors must rebuild their worlds and reinvent the language to do so. Tulk’s O does just that work; it is a beautiful book about our darkest human experiences.”

—Lynn Melnick, author of Refusenik

“The deeper I waded into Niki Tulk’s O, the more I awoke. These poems throb in the shadow of poets like Anne Sexton, Muriel Rukeyser, and take up the challenge of philosopher Hélène Cixous, whose feminist writings urged women to ‘write her self.’ As Whitman responded to Emerson’s call for the great American poet, so Tulk answers Cixous’ vision—and oh girl, does Tulk succeed. These poems grow from personal and literary history and breathe themselves into being on the page. They ‘crashjangle’ us through the veil of patriarchy which, as Tulk writes, gendered violence is part of the fabric. Tulk is an interdisciplinary artist who sees the world and language with clarity and vision and delivers a song we have all been hearing in our heads but have never until this point been able to name. O is an ambitious, imaginative, mind-bending, heart-breaking, and world-creating collection that establishes Tulk as an original voice in feminist literature. I cannot wait to see what she does next.”

—Michelle Bonczek Evory, author of The Ghosts of Lost Animals