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Laura’s Desires is a diptych of two formally distinct long poems, each approaching various pop-cultural artifacts as a way to engage with longing, vulnerability, and the possibility of liberation.
Referencing pop culture artifacts, from hit ’90s singles like Selena’s “Dreaming of You” to heroines of cult classic TV and films (Laura Palmer and Variety’s Christine), this dynamic collection looks to these iconic touchstones as sites for feminist analysis and intervention. Traveling through dreamscapes, fantasy, and the quotidian, Laura’s Desires forges a path away from fear and shame, guiding us towards liberation.
—Ben Fama, BOMB
“Radio and film and dream pulse with desire throughout these poems . . . incredible lyricism.”
—Philip Sorenson, Los Angeles Review of Books
"The book is an autobiography, but of a psyche not a person. It takes an underworld approach to the terrain of the world: the rapture and violence of love and death, which pigments the utter mundanity of life."
"“Laura’s Desires,” the eponymous long poem of the forthcoming Laura’s Desires (Nightboat, March 2024) examines bodies and how they gather–in subway cars and movie theaters, on camping trips and at living room sex parties. The poem manages to create on the page the same spaces of possibility that I seek at an in-person reading. Encounters between the speaker and lovers, friends, strangers, art, and the natural world provide sustained and fleeting moments."
—Stella-Ann Harris, Air/Light
"The book is whip-smart, authentic, grounded and visionary. Henriksen’s attention to each line (“cars, trash bags tripping aimless”) is exemplary—I couldn’t find a dull one. Reading it is the perfect way to spend a full-moon evening."
—emily brandt, Open Language
"What a dull world we’d have to put up with if desire didn’t mean too much! Laura Henriksen’s lust for life leads her into reverie. In a magnificent pair of philosophical poem-essays, Henriksen twangs the elastics that stretch from the subject to God, from want to social possibility, from peat moss to sexed being. As the detente that paused the sex wars collapses, I’m personally grateful that Henriksen is on the side of women who fuck and think about it."
—Kay Gabriel
"Laura’s Desires blasts open the possessive suffix in its own title, showing us how desire is never one’s own insofar as it always belongs to someone else–a lover’s gaze, an imagined other."
—Mirene Arsanios
"A beautiful, gentle, and fiercely intelligent book, of our time and for us."
—Simone White
"[B]y turns philosophical and playful, serious and sexy, personal and expansive. Together, they examine how the tributaries of our individual longing can flow toward the goal of collective liberation."
—Rebecca von Laer, Full Stop