Paige Ackerson-Kiely

“Because I am an American and often worry about many things, I seek out consolation before beginning to write, and little in this world consoles me more than the male falsetto: Skip James [2], Jónsi Birgisson [3], Pepe Núñez [4], Roscoe Holcomb [5], Antony Hegarty and company [6]. A great falsetto contains everything—vulnerability, artifice, control, tenderness, breath, hoot, indirect sexuality, finitude—but most important, it is constrained by, and therefore expresses, a sort of transgression or otherness. The male falsetto reminds me that tension among all these things is exquisite and vital—in fact, I often try to ‘hear’ my poems sung this way—and grants me permission to move beyond my usual range.”
—Paige Ackerson-Kiely, author of My Love Is a Dead Arctic Explorer (Ahsahta Press, 2012)