Publications

Cover image from STARTING A LIFE by Sam Hockaday

CHAPBOOKS

SPACE ON EARTH

"The Milky Way. Splitting an atom. Glacious mountains. Skin cells. Emily Hockaday’s fourth chap collection, Space on Earth, is a journey examining space and scopes in and out of Earth.... I always treasure poetry which is self-aware, Frank O’Hara-esque, goes on the nerve and states out loud the internal struggles of arriving at the poet destination."

—Kristiane Weeks-Rogers, The Harbor Review

"I like a chapbook that has layers and a range of feelings. A title with a dual meaning helps, too. I don’t need a story or narrative, but a development of feeling is good. Here, “space” plays a big part . . . in terms of outer space, as well as the distance between things and people. There are boundaries. There are also Vikings (like the warrior queen on the front cover [above]) and frogs (back cover) and explorations of existential dread. Oh, and science. It’s really great and infinitely readable and enjoyable.
From 'Stories Our Bodies Tell':
'I said the moon is an open eye
but I was wrong. Tonight it is just
a crater-pocked satellite, lit along
the edge not obscured by
our shadow.'"

—Scott Sweeney, publisher at Grey Book Press

OPHELIA: A BOTANIST'S GUIDE

Out with Zoo Cake Press, Ophelia is a series of sonnets from Ophelia's perspective and botanical illustrations by Sam Hockaday.
OPHELIA is SOLD OUT, but Emily has a very few available. Reach out through the contact form to ask about purchasing one.

"You don’t have to be a botanist, or a Shakespearean scholar, to see the craft and beauty in these poems."

"It is as if Ophelia herself is detailing her thoughts, feelings, and histories about the plants while intellectually analyzing them and the roles they have played in her life. The combination of the two will leave readers a little smarter, and a little more emotional, than when they started."

—Lindsey Lewis Smithson, Straight Forward Poetry

"...while Hamlet asks us to understand Ophelia through the language of flowers, Hockaday asks us to go a step further and understand Ophelia through the science of flowers themselves."

--Letitia Montgomery-Rodgers, The Los Angeles Review

WHAT WE LOVE AND WILL NOT GIVE UP

"Love is the drug driving this [book]... sometimes slantwise, sometimes head on. Either way, it’s messy."
"Rooted in contemporary life, What We Love and Will Not Give Up makes new its most maddening and enduring subject"

--Angelina Ayers, Sabotage Reviews

"Hockaday redefines one’s perspective on human interaction through her brilliant writing. What We Love And Will Not Give Up certainly deserves a spot in your poetry collection."

—Lyle Carating, Blot Lit Reviews

STARTING A LIFE

"If one could actually read 'in between the lines' of a narrative, actually see the words and say them out loud, those lines may very well sound like these poems. In STARTING A LIFE, Emily Hockaday presents a critical time in a young woman's life—not as confession, happily, but as intimate musing, thought, reflection, and oblique anecdote. Rendered in the third person, the untitled pieces feel like a modern fairy tale where one false turn has led to a grove of loss. But not for long. A lovely collection."

--Kimiko Hahn, author of TOXIC FLORA

"Hockaday's voice is disarmingly honest and tender and brave throughout, and the collection progresses with a subtle, cumulative resonance and power. Here is a lovely, memorable debut."

--Deborah Landau, author of THE LAST USABLE HOUR and ORCHIDELIRIUM

"STARING A LIFE is one of the great subway books; it's put together like a train, with a pervert in every car. These poems move from one to the next leaving gaps and spaces that work to tell us the rest of the story. I love how these poems are holey and diaphanous like this while also stopping to stare very closely at the hairs on peoples' fingers."

--Matthew Rohrer, author of DESTROYER AND PRESERVER

POEMS

"I Throw my Daughter," "Nursing My Daughter," & "The Ghost Flies Low" Coffin Bell Forthcoming
“Dream of Labor,” “The Ghost Is Back,” & “The Ghost Knows,”   Gaze Forthcoming
"Class: Order: Family" and "Portrait of a Humpback" Gone Lawn   Forthcoming
"When the Ghost Speaks"   The Gateway Review January 2020
“Final Goodbye,” “Shifter,” “Resurrection Spell” & “The Mechanics,” Middle House Review January 2020
"Offering"   Soundings East Fall 2019
"Energy Crisis,” “Inertia,” “Éostre,” “Aubade”
& “Stories Our Bodies Tell,” The Henniker Review           July 2019
"Sunken Forest, Sailor's Haven" Parks & Points    April 2019
"Distance" Harpur Palate Spring 2019
"Ghazal" Isacoustic Winter 2019
"Kenning" SWWIM Daily   November 2018
"Moonless Night"   Moonchild Winter 2018
“Parting” & “Golden Hour”        Newtown Literary Winter 2018
“Triolet”      The Hopper     Summer 2018
“Mathematics of Safety”       The Maine Review Summer 2018
“145 BPM”          The Freshwater Review       Summer 2018
“We Argue About Pluto”            Salt Hill Journal Summer 2018
“Since Ejyafjallajökul Erupted”      Stoneboat Spring 2018
“At Talisman, Barett Beach,” “To a Former Paramour,”
& “How We Got Here,” Calamus Winter 2018
"Walking Back from Cherry Grove at Midnight" Cosmonaut's Avenue      June/July 2017
"Bisecting a Peach, Cleanly" One       Winter 2017
"Origin Story," "Frog Fears" &
     "Universe Expanding Faster than Previously Thought..." The Collapsar Fall 2016
"Mating Ritual" Amethyst Arsenic      Fall 2016
"Division" & "La Niña Year" The Opiate Summer 2016
"Crabbing" Silver Birch Press Summer 2016
"Bedtime Story"   Qu Literary Magazine      Summer 2016
"Comfort" The Lindenwood Review   Summer 2016
"Dream of Tom's Overdose," "We Look at Our Love" Newtown Literary    Fall 2015
"LaGuardia Marina" Potomac Review    Fall 2015
"Scattering Your Ashes"                                                                                           Day One      November 5, 2014
"Cat Summer,” “Morning Debris”                                                                           Freefall Magazine       Fall 2014
“Heatwave,” “Amtrak at Twilight”                                                                           Spoon River Poetry Review Spring 2014
“Shadow Puppets”                                                                                                    Noctua Review                   Spring 2014
“Social Networking,” “The Problem with Doctrine,”
        “Your Grandfather’s Wake,” “Valentine’s Day, the future”                        The Subterranean Quarterly   January 2014
“Reflexology”                                                                                                            Burningword                            January 2014
“The Retired Magician”                                                                                           The North American Review   Fall 2013
“Remission,” “Long Purples,” “Likely Trauma”                                                     Stone Highway Review       September 2013
“Trouble,” “McSheehan's”                                                                                       Newtown Literary                     Summer 2013
"Crabbing"                                                                                                                Go Places July 2012
"Different Than Addiction"                                                                                    The Chaffey Review            March 2012
“Kenny on Youtube,” “Genesis, footnotes”                                                         West Wind Review                     February 2011
“What is Left”                                                                                                         Plainspoke Literary Review   December 2010
“Funniest Home Videos,” “How to Survive,” “Space Junk"                          Pear Noir!                                     January 2010