Welcome to Midland

Welcome to Midland is a queer coming-of-age narrative in verse set against the backdrop of conservative small-town Texas. These linked poems explore the cultural and natural history of West Texas (from the horned lizard to dirt storms to Laura Bush’s car accident), connecting events and movements from across eras to create a tenuous yet strong sense of place. Giving voice to secrets and silence, Welcome to Midland considers identity, community, family, and legend.

"With gentle, simple language, Logen Cure invokes images so rich that you can almost taste them. Her love of words and her ability to tell a story reveal her to be a poet with a novelist's sense of narrative and characterization. For instance, in 'Camera Shy,' she deftly paints a picture of high school angst and joy so evocative that it transports us in time—summing up our shared experience of adolescence in a few heartbreakingly beautiful images. Logen Cure's poetry shakes readers in a way that can't be logically explained, but that you can feel in your bones, and in your memories." —Wess Mongo Jolley, Author, Editor, and Founder of the IndieFeed Performance Poetry Channel “Every once in a great while, a poetry reading can freeze an audience in their seats. This happened to me on a sweltering Fort Worth evening… One thing was certain: when poet Logen Cure had finished with the audience, you could’ve heard a pin drop… Afterward, the friend who’d accompanied me leaned over and said, ‘You know how I said I didn’t like poetry? I think I was wrong.’” —Camille Griep, author of New Charity Blues

Logen Cure is a queer poet and professor. She is the author of three chapbooks: Still, Letters to Petrarch, and In Keeping. She curates Inner Moonlight, a monthly reading series for The Wild Detectives in Dallas. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She lives in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas.