Oversight: Erasure Poetry

“From the archives of feminist history comes Oversight, a collection of part-found, part-persona poems inspired by the writing of women who have changed the world. These poems do not erase so much as they lift up the words and voices of greats like Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Sappho, Harriet Tubman, Frida Kahlo, and more. Carina Bissett and Lee Murray play the role of speaker, eulogist, medium, hagiographer, and spirit guide for the powerful women of the past, making their work at once accessible to the contemporary reader. Revolutionary, visionary, incendiary, this collection is an enlightening and meaningful read.” —Holly Lyn Walwrath, Managing Editor of Intersteller Flight Press, author of the Bram Stoker Award-Nominated Numinous Stones

“A fascinating and timely collection of erasure poems that bring historical texts by women around the world to life. Oversight creates new meaning from the words of these women and shines a light on their successes, sorrows, and revolutionary spirits.” —Courtney Bates-Hardy, author of Anatomical Venus

“The poems collected here aren’t really erasures as they are distillations of the visions and insights of a vast and thorough collection of our most important female writers. In this manner, Oversight provides an introduction to these voices for new readers, and a reminder to readers who consider such writers foundational that one should and must return to their works with renewed vigor. The reflections that follow each erasure poem offer context and personal insights and are, as such, a deep pleasure to read.” —Cate Marvin, Ph.D., award-winning author of Event Horizon and Oracle

“Oversight is an innovative collaboration from poets Lee Murray and Carina Bissett, who use historical texts from women writers to generate a group of potent poems relevant to today’s world. In conversation with these women, and with each other, Murray and Bissett show how women shapeshift throughout time in order to make progress. The poets’ engagement with both historical and personal discovery allows the reader a way into both the poems and the texts they’re based on, provoking self-evaluation and appreciation. In this way, they act as alchemists of the past, providing greater universal understanding for the present.” —Christine Butterworth-McDermott, The Spellbook of Fruit & Flowers

About the Authors

Carina Bissett is a writer, poet, and editor working primarily in the fields of dark fiction and fabulism. She has written numerous short stories, many of which are featured in her debut collection Dead Girl, Driving and Other Devastations (2024), and she is also a co-editor of the award-winning anthology Shadow Atlas: Dark Landscapes of the Americas (2021). Her poetry has been nominated for the Rhysling Award, the Pushcart Prize, and Sundress Publications Best of the Net. Her nonfiction has been nominated for a Bram Stoker Award®. Links to her work can be found at http://carinabissett.com.

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Lee Murray ONZM is a writer, editor, poet, essayist, and screenwriter. A New Zealand Society of Authors Honorary Literary Fellow, she is the first person of Asian descent to hold the New Zealand Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement, one of her country’s most prestigious accolades. She is a five-time Bram Stoker Awards® winner, including for poetry for Tortured Willows (with Christina Sng, Angela Yuriko Smith,and Geneve Flynn), and was awarded the Grimshaw Sargeson Fellowship and the NZSA Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize for ‘unique and original’ vision for her debut solo poetry collection Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud, released in 2024 by The Cuba Press. Exploring Chinese women’s experiences in Aotearoa, New Zealand’s Poet Laureate, Chris Tse, described the collection as a “full-bodied experience”. An Elgin Award runner up, and a multiple Rhysling-, Dwarf Star-, and Pushcart-nominated poet, Lee’s poem “cheongsam’ won her the 2021 Australian Shadows Award. Together with Lindy Ryan, she co-edited women-in-horror poetry anthology Under Her Eye, a Pixel’s Project / Black Spot Books publication to eliminate violence against women. Read more at leemurray.info.