Bonnie Bolling's first collection of poetry, In the Kingdom of the Sons, won the Liam Rector First Book Prize for Poetry, and her second, The Red Hijab, won the John Ciardi Poetry Prize. She was awarded fellowships by Bread Loaf Writers Conferences, Prague Summer Writers and the University of California, Riverside, where she received a MFA. Her play, The Red Hijab, was produced at UCR by Playworks in 2010. Bonnie is editor-in-chief of Verdad and lives in southern California and the Persian Gulf.

Books by Bonnie Bolling:

Other poems on the web by Bonnie Bolling:
Two poems
"Harrowing"
"Reproduction"

Bonnie Bolling's Website.

About The Red Hijab:

"Bolling’s collection is one of glances, quick ones, apertures, slow ones and tiny voyages into expansive and borderless systems—love, chaos, humanity & violence. The poems unfurl with the poetic wisdom of Rumi and the almost-captive squared-in spaces of Camus—with lentils and hooked-up sheep and lonely long-faced horses. What country is it? An ancient one ruled by ancient practices, a new one blistering itself into blood-letting birth? Or the one in-between recorded by the scribe, wet with hymns and prayer rugs, and quick faces of women and cruel desires of adolescents and silhouettes in flames? Notice this with flat bread and kitchen light, with hand-made weapons and rubble. This is one of the finest set of verses I have read in years. With the bitter-sweet melody of the philosopher and the outcast, the listener of a country’s moans, that is, the sweeper of grabbed-up joys those lost shredded flags of lettuce-like things people grasp before death, so, perhaps, they will blossom into something else that will escort them to life—this voice here, leaves it on this table, for us. A total masterpiece."
—Juan Felipe Herrera

"St. Anthony of Padua reminds us: The prayer of the monk is not perfect until he no longer recognizes himself or the fact that he is praying. This is the great virtue of The Red Hijab. Living in Bahrain for several years, Bonnie Bolling’s new book is a secular hymn, an affirmation of life. The poet loses herself in the careful attention to the smallest daily details of the culture—a broom, bread, a cat, a plumeria blossom, the call of the muezzin. Taken together, they focus on a common life source rising above sectarianism. Yet Bolling is clear-eyed and realistic in observing the ironies and consequences of politics and religions. These are points of meditation that sing with a quiet hope for us all. These are poems of experience, modest and exact—poems that achieve a brilliant, honest light."
—Christopher Buckley