Jen Fisher’s inaugural book of poetry, In the Mud, is a book about searching. Fisher, a Head Hi friend and collaborator, is searching for something to ground herself in, searching for home, searching for certainty, and searching for self. Her poems are filled with a raw power and an unflinching examination of agony, as well as of hope. They are unabashed, splayed open, moving us through a dialectical exploration of repulsion and attraction. In the Mud is not only about the strength of creating a life, but of continuing to search despite uncertainty.
 
Fisher travels through the world open in totality to experience and encounter, harnessing the chaotic and powerful energy of movement within one’s own humanity, next to others, with others. The ultimate achievement is spiritual, Fisher relentlessly looks for Truth within all things and in it we feel her acute attunement to the flux of fate and the fullness of life. With modernist sensibilities and a distinct tone and rhythm, Fisher marries simple language to complex topics.
 
Her work comes to us during a revolutionary time and speaks to the varying degrees of violence we all endure in the decaying patriarchal and capitalist social order. She shows us what it means to cast off old values, and the complexities that process entails.