Christina Olson’s work has appeared in Harpur Palate, Salt Hill Journal, Smartish Pace and elsewhere, including the anthologies DIAGRAM.2 and Best New Poets 2007. She serves as Delaware’s poet laureate, appointed in 2008. She teaches poetry in schools and community organizations throughout the state and lives with her family in Newark.

Other poems by Christina Olson in Verse Daily:

Books by Christina Olson:

Other poems on the web by Christina Olson:
"Past Perfect"
"These Are the Thousands"
Five poems
"Before I Came Home Naked"

Christina Olson's Website.

About Before I Came Home Naked:

"Before I Came Home Naked is a marvelous x-ray of Midwestern oddities and delights with the wonder and vulnerability that comes from examining the family tree—limb from crackly limb. In her debut, Olson expertly sweeps the reader into the depths of heartbreak and humor from the very first poem. These pages burst with rewards: ample evidence of a naturalist's love of the outdoors, a sagacious blend of compassion and mirth, and the best drinking companion you'd ever imagine. This is a poetry that bears brave witness to that place in a 'ruby heart' where the internal and external landscape crash and clatter into the loveliest of songs."
—Aimee Nezhukumatathil

"Finally! A collection of poems that resurrects the woolly booger, the world’s largest ball of twine, and the two- or three-line title. Read Christina Olson’s Before I Came Home Naked and then write her a note on a matchbook cover thanking her for these killer poems."
—Alison Pelegrin

"I’d let Christina Olson take me anywhere. Lucky for me, in these poems she does. Their premises are endlessly exciting and new: we go to the hurricane name retirement center, to the realm of Bigfoot, to a place where different types of alcohol are men. Smart, sassy, full of both the true and apocryphal conversational factoids of the information age, Olson’s poems are emotionally honest and ruthless in their search for truth, even as her title poem asserts, 'Why let the truth ruin everything.' The brother in 'Shooting Lessons' asks the speaker, 'Do you understand / how anything works . . . / or do English majors / just believe in magic?' If these poems — this fresh language, this vision — are the kind of magic he’s talking about, then I believe in magic, too, and in every page of this book."
—Katrina Vandenberg

"The poems in Before I Came Home Naked unfold like the stories of a fascinating stranger you meet one night in a dimly lit country western bar—truthful, funny and always finding drama without being melodramatic."
—Jason Bredle