Finalist, 2020 Miller Williams Poetry Prize

Inspired by Matsuo Basho's writings and teachings on poetics and haiku, the interrelated lyric poems in Sky of Wu investigate work and marriage, the question of becoming a parent while watching a parent age into dementia, and the realities of wrestling with inequality, pollution, and habitat loss while navigating everyday life in Oakland, California. Simultaneously, they converse with Chinese poets from the eighth century and Japanese writers from the eleventh and seventeenth centuries. From these disparate sources, Halebsky weaves together small moments, stolen phrases, and images of beauty, allowing them to reveal their own sly humor and unvarnished truth.