Walker-Figueroa, Devon

Devon Walker-Figueroa’s poems have appeared in various publications, including The Nation, POETRY, The American Poetry Review, the Lana Turner journal, and Ploughshares. Philomath: Poems (Milkweed Editions), her debut collection, was selected for the 2020 National Poetry Series by Sally Keith. In Philomath, Walker-Figueroa offers reflections of overgrowth and the places that haunt us. Beginning with the town that lends its name to the book, she wanders out into fields and farmland and beyond, guiding readers toward a kind of witness that doesn’t flinch from the bleak or bizarre. She writes in quiet awe of nature, of memory, and beauty and the poet’s (sometimes reluctant) obligation “to keep an eye / on what is left” of the people and places that have impacted us.