Erica Bernheim was born in New Jersey and grew up in Ohio and Italy. She holds degrees from Miami Univesrity, The University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, and The University of Illinois at Chicago. She lives in Lakeland, Florida, and directs the creative writing program at Florida Southern College. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in The Iowa Review, Boston Review, Court Green, Columbia Poetry Review, Black Warrior Review, and Gulf Coast, among others. The Mimic Sea is her first full-length collection.
As brilliantly and extravagantly hued as some rare fighting fish dangerously residing with us in the living room within the confines of the domestic version of the aquariums for which this wondrous collection is named, The Mimic Sea displays myriad radiant tones that shift as they catch the light—ominous, flirtatious, chilling, elegiac, and coy—and like all great poems and the most urgent spiritual addresses, it’s impossible to say whether Bernheim’s poems unfurl in courtship or in rage. These poems are dazzling, surprising, and as heartbreaking as they are venomous.
—Robyn Schiff
Erica Bernheim’s poems are deft and uncanny ‘tales of spontaneous human combustion’; fueled by desire, ignited by acute alertness and verbal intelligence, and stirred by withering, self-scrutinizing wit. Above all, they are models of empathetic engagement, and their hard-won bursts of spontaneity are as humane as they are exhilarating.
—Mark Levine
For more information on the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award please visit our submissions page. If you have questions, comments, concerns, or would like to request a review copy please e-mail 42 Miles directly.
Thank you for supporting poetry & small presses!
42milespress.com 