Poetry


Nikia Chaney’s there was this bird has held court and sway in my poetic imagination and sensibilities since I first set my mind to it. ATTENTION: Nikia Chaney interrupts your regularly scheduled programming to introduce you to linguistic, syntactical, and formal experimentations for your inspiration and information. . . . For goddess’s sake and with all haste, get this book for its building blocks of poetic futures.

 -makalani bandele, author of (jopappy & the sentence-makers are) eponymous as funk


Nikia Chaney’s there was this bird is a collection grounded in sharp and mind-bending perceptions. These poems affirm the primacy of the restless, radical imagination. . . . Reading Nikia Chaney’s new book will stop you, sit you down, and wake you up.

-tim seibles, author of Voodoo Libretto


there was this bird chirps with intimate, layered, and thick language as wing and experimental art as beak—every poem at its own towering height of flight.

-anastacia-renée, author of
Here in the (Middle) of Nowhere

us mouth attempts to speak to the fracturing of intimate relationships, the importance of voice, song, and empathy as an instrument of connection and healing. The poems are filled with wordplay and rhythm to create an intensity of presence of various speakers who cry out in the pain and joy of being alive. 
Coming Soon - March 2025
“Chaney’s poems chart the ocean of sexual joy in, well, everything. First you drop into the visual wave of Chaney’s poems, then ride along into the various reels. These words dance, dodge, parkour, wander, pivot into saying everything about and through jouissance; sideways salty syncopations and reorderings of every atom charge the page with an energy of creation.”
- Cynthia Arrieu-King, on ​to stir &, in
​The Word Works

Memoir
"Ladybug is a remarkable memoir by a remarkable writer.  Nikia Chaney has succeeded brilliantly in making art of a childhood scarred by abuse, isolation and neglect.   That she lived to tell this heartbreaking story is something of a miracle.  Equally astounding, however, is that despite the chaos and sadness that she faced growing up, Nikia, now the adult, has discovered within herself the wiser, kinder, more gentle soul that I’d like to think all of us were meant to be.  I learned a great deal about the human heart from Nikia’s story, and I suspect others who read this work will learn a great deal about themselves, too."
- From James Brown, author of LA Diaries. ​

Chapbooks, & Short Collections

Anthologies

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