Wrecks is a collection of poems inspired by the great auk, a flightless seabird driven to extinction in the mid-1800s. The last two known members of the species were killed on Eldey Island, Iceland, in 1844. The auk was repeatedly described by those who killed the bird as making human-like gestures and sounds, including sighs. Wrecks investigates how the human-nonhuman binary and the dehumanization it enables makes space for violence—against animals and the environment, but also against other humans. It explores the colonial systems that drive extinction, and the hierarchical structure by which hegemonic powers decide what is—and what is not—human. It engages the author's experience of dehumanization as an atheist growing up in the conservative South; it also interrogates her complicity in systems of structural racism, and her inheritance as the descendant of colonizers.
Erin L. McCoy's poetry collection, Wrecks, was a finalist for the Noemi Book Award. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Narrative, American Poetry Review, Conjunctions, Pleiades, Seventh Wave, and other publications. Her work has appeared in the Best New Poets anthology twice, and she was a finalist for the Missouri Review's 2021 Miller Audio Prize. She won second place in the 2019-2020 Rougarou Poetry Contest, judged by CAConrad, and she is the recipient of an Oakley Hall III Memorial Scholarship to attend the Community of Writers. Erin is an assistant poetry editor at Narrative, a proofreader at Penguin Random House, and acquisitions editor for Entre Ríos Books. She holds an MFA in creative writing and an MA in Spanish and Latin American literature from the University of Washington. She is from Louisville, Kentucky. Her website is erinlmccoy.com.
"Erin L. McCoy's Wrecks is a lyrical reckoning, opening the uneasy depths of what we imagine as human and nonhuman: 'Squint, reader, through the sudden fog.' Inspired by the great auk, a sea bird driven to extinction, Wrecks unravels the splintering shards of violence that arise from dehumanization. McCoy deftly weaves in historical research and speculative magic through visceral imagery and evocative form — linking the self to the haunting reverberations of the past: 'witch-auk what have i done.'" — Jane Wong
"Wrecks is an important new collection about the messes that European domination of land, animals, and indigenous peoples has made of this world. It is even more impressive as a debut, replete with all the things I love in poetry collections: history, research, strange imagination. The Great Auk, an extinct species, is transformed into the mythology of witch-auk, a figure that McCoy invents as a companion and sometimes victim of the speaker. Where the perspective of McCoy's speaker reaches its limits, the lived experience and visual renderings of Shanawdithit—the last known living member of the Beothuk people—emerges. This book is an example of what poetry can teach us that empirical knowledge cannot." — Joy Priest
"Wrecks is a work of great integrity, meticulous research, and tender feeling. From the wrecks of the great auks, McCoy's voice emerges, lyric and capacious. The poet's squint sharpens into revelation as she interrogates the collective pronoun: who are 'we,' and what turns inside our intelligence? Propelled by her singular rhythm and syntax, this collection explores presence and absence, the real and the uncanny, fantasy and its rejection. Clouds snarl with filed teeth; stalactites become lolling tongues. From a writer of exquisite vision, this is a debut of rare imagination and reach." — Erin Marie Lynch
