“'We were not meant to survive / the departure,' writes Sarah Kersey in Residence Time, which, ironically, is the kind of book that becomes possible when someone in fact does survive the cataclysm. What words are suitable to describe it? How is language irrevocably altered in its aftermath? How do we make something beautiful out of what we’ve lived, and out of what the ancestors, our parents, and our loves have left us? Residence Time explores the detritus of the wake, and catalogues the rippling effects of loss—of history, of faith, of family—in the voice of a poet who is both careful and profound. Residence Time is small but mighty; Kersey has managed to fit a devastating, but beautiful world into it.”
—Destiny O. Birdsong, author of Negotiations

“Sarah Kersey’s stunning debut, Residence Time, begins in origin and sinks into realities that operate like dreams. This speaker remarks on the sonic beauty of the word ‘diaspora,’ asking ‘how many iambs did it take to cross the sea?’ Kersey’s forms snap apart, square, and seep—each poem scrambles excitedly, expansive like a midnight conversation between beloveds hidden under a sheet. I will turn to this poet, always, for how they trace the tangles between past and present, for how they obsess over the question of what permanence means.”
—Taneum Bambrick, author of Intimacies, Received