Mare's Nest
The latest installment in the Sarabande Series in Kentucky Literature, Mare’s Nest Kentucky horse farm in its turbulent beginnings.
From Kentucky native and Brooklyn-based poet Holly Mitchell, Mare’s Nest troubles the meaning of a racehorse, in particular the broodmare and the foals she carries. Reaching from the photographic experiment of Muybridge’s "The Horse in Motion" to Patti Smith’s album Horses, Mitchell touches upon history, dreams, Southern family stories, and queer adolescence in the early aughts.
Colloquially referring to a muddled situation or an illusory discovery, the term “mare’s nest” can also refer quite literally to the soft depression left by a horse lying in grass. And so the idea of a “mare’s nest," in all of its linguistic potential, serves as the central focus for Holly Mitchell’s meditative debut.
Holly Mitchell is a poet from Kentucky, now based in New York. A winner of an Amy Award from Poets & Writers, Holly received an MFA in Creative Writing from NYU and a BA in English from Mount Holyoke College. Holly’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Steaming (an online publication by Fence), Afternoon Visitor, and the Lambda Literary Poetry Spotlight, among other journals.
