Hover

Poetry and prose that takes on multiple forms to celebrate queer polyamorous families.

Liza Flum’s Hover focuses on queer polyamorous families, considering the ways people in radical family structures are both highly visible and erased. From hummingbirds to stars, historical records, and cemetery monuments, Flum searches for images to represent lives and loves like her own and to find lasting traces of queer and chosen family. In the poetic lexicon of Hover, hummingbirds become emblems of ungraspable survival and vitality, while records on paper and in stone afford enduring, though limited, representations.

The book explores sexuality, love, reproductive choice, and infertility in sonnets and expansive prose meditations. Linked stanzas, which act as little rooms, suggest the intermingling of bedrooms, doctor’s offices, and hospital rooms. The many forms in this collection claim space, both on the page and in poetic discourse, to make the intimate outwardly visible.

Liza Flum is a poet and teacher. Her poems have appeared in journals including AGNI, Narrative, Poet Lore, and Washington Square Review. She is a recipient of a Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grant, and her writing has been supported by fellowships from the Saltonstall Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, Aspen Summer Words, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. She lives with her family in the Finger Lakes region of New York.