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Anna Lena

@aproflection.bsky.social

806 followers 654 following 104 posts

Poet/teacher/editor/printer/plant person. Might Could, winner of the Anthony Hecht Prize, 3/2026 / Ornament, UNT Press / Editor, @ecotonemagazine.bsky.social / Opinions my own; reposts ≠ endorsements linktr.ee/alpb

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Anna Lena @aproflection.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Beaucoup thanks to @bittersouth.bsky.social and @kyletibbsjones.bsky.social for including this poem among such good company in their issue 14. Love that back cover 💗 Tisko Tansi for scale bittersoutherner.com/issue-no-14/...

Instructions for Healing Within View of Those Who Have Wished You Harm

Anna Lena Phillips Bell

Shake it,
without moving,
out.
Planted, rooted, sit
utterly serene: as iris, as anemone,
shake it—
send it,
hard rain off crown, beard, skittering
out
past sight, past doubt.
Still in your withstanding, shimmery,
shake it,
silent-laugh it
off; see it shimmying
out
into far air—and you, lit
with nectar, in reverie,
shake it
out.

The Bitter Southerner issue 14, a large-format magazine on rust and white-colored fabric

Table of contents for The Bitter Southerner 14

Back cover of The Bitter Southerner 14, reading THERE WILL BE NO CAKE, on rust and white fabric, with a petite buff-colored cat lying next to it

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Anna Lena @aproflection.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

If you’d like a copy you can get one at the St Brigid Press site. www.stbrigidpress.net/books/one-li... And if you want to make it easier for fireflies, you can turn off exterior lights at night, and also leave leaves on the ground where they fall 💛

A pamphlet open to its title page. In yellow text descending the page is One Lightning Bug. In green, below, is Anna Lena Phillips Bell * St Brigid Press 2026

The epigraph page of a pamphlet. It reads, in black type, Signs are indicating light pollution as a major factor in the disappearance of fireflies all over the world. —Firefly Conservation and Research

A pamphlet open to the first page of the text. It reads,

What do you love? What do you know?
Glow

How do you call to all the same?
Gleam

The first line of each couplet is printed in black ink. The second line of each is indented past the end of the first line, and is printed in firefly-yellow ink.

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Anna Lena @aproflection.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Happy solstice! Here is the kind of luck I have—Emily Hancock of @stbrigidpress.bsky.social has made my poem “One Lightning Bug,” from Might Could, into a tiny letterpress-printed pamphlet. Emily showed me that the cover does this!

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Anna Lena @aproflection.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

Might Could and me at AWP. I haven't been in ages and am really looking forward. Come say hi! 💚

Anna Lena Phillips Bell at AWP 2026

Wednesday, 3/4

32 Poems/Barrelhouse/Smartish Pace reading
7:00–10:00 pm
United Methodist Church, 10 East Mt. Vernon Place

Thursday, 3/5

The Anthony Hecht Prize:
A Twentieth-Anniversary Reading
9:00–10:45 am
Room 326, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

Material Encounters: On Teaching the Multimodal
1:45–3:00 pm
Room 315, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

Celebrating New Books
5–6 pm
Gallery 1448, 1448 E. Baltimore St.

Anna Lena Phillips Bell at AWP 2026

Friday, 3/6
Ecotone/UNC Wilmington table
12:00–1:45 pm, book fair, T1130/1132

Book signing for Might Could
2:00–3:00 pm, Asterism Books, booth 1266/1268

Siren Songs at Hotel Ulysses
4–6:30 pm, Ash Bar, 2 East Read St.

Image/Fairfield University MFA Program reading
6:30–7:30 pm, James Room, Sixth Floor
Renaissance Harborplace Hotel

Saturday, 3/7

Book signing for Might Could
11:00 am–noon, Terrain.org, booth 751/753

Read the Room
featuring The Hopkins Review
5:30–7:30 pm, 2640 Space, 2640 St Paul St.

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Anna Lena @aproflection.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

Might Could is available for preorder! Thanks to @pomegranate_books you can order a signed copy—at pombookslocal.com or the link is in my bio. Or for an unsigned copy, visit @asterism_books. THANK YOU to everyone who’s ordered the book already, or asked your library to. 💚 Also, m e l t i c e.

A copy of Might Could, a diminutive poetry book, lying on snowy grass. The cover reads Might Could / Anna Lena Phillips Bell / Winner of the Twentieth Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize, and features a work in glass by artist Amber Cowan: a footed compote with a clear cloche over it, filled with vegetative forms and a vintage glass fox.

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Anna Lena @aproflection.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

Here's the new @nimrodjournal.bsky.social, looking ✨✨✨. It has two poems from MIGHT COULD, including this one. Thanks to editor @bdralyuk.bsky.social, and to @randallmann.bsky.social, judge for the Neruda Prize, for naming this poem second place and for his comments. 💚

A copy of the winter 2026 issue of Nimrod atop a blue USPS mailbox. The cover displays the magazine's nameplate, its date, and the names of contributors, in colorblocked shades of brown.

A page from Nimrod Winter 2026 with the following text:
ANNA LENA PHILLIPS BELL / Undoing / The list, / though long, / won't last, // though, loosed / to sing, / the list // spools past / even evening. / Won't last, // you, this fast, / unpausing— / you list, // creased, / task-stung. / To last, // rest, persist / in ceasing. / The list / won't last.

SScreenshot with text on a pale yellow-orange background reading: Mann on Anna Lena Phillips Bell: I love the economy yet fecundity of language in these poems, the sidelong wit and sense of wonder. My favorite of these is the villanelle "Undoing," the scrupulous pleasures and refusals therein: the play and pathos "spools past," slow but fast. And there is much to note in other poems too, the "style and stigma" of flowers; the unexpected elegy for a hat, a hat a proxy for us all as we inevitably fall apart. In knowing, winning ways, the poet transforms the everyday into a kind of open secret.

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Anna Lena @aproflection.bsky.social · 01/11/2025

Might Could has a cover! Designed by the lovely Philip Hoy, with artwork by Amber Cowan. Thanks to Waywiser Books—can't wait to share this book with y'all. ❤ www.waywiserbooks.org/coming-soon

The cover of a book on a background of leaves and abstract text. The text on the cover reads Might Could / Anna Lena Phillips Bell / Winner of the Twentieth Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize. Title and author are set in an elegant serifed typeface in a very dark green. In the center of the cover is a sculpture by Amber Cowan, a stylized terrarium all of glass, including leaves, strawberries, and a small Boyd's glass fox beneath a glass dome.

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Anna Lena @aproflection.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

I’m honored to be part of the 50th-anniversary issue of Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, including this rondelet written during azalea time & from the midst of morning sickness (Scented trash bags are an abomination whether one is already nauseated or not.) Thanks to editor @longrules.bsky.social 💚💚

A copy of the fiftieth-anniversary issue of Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review—whose cover is a grid of grayscale and faintly colored images—in a bed of pink azalea flowers and green leaves

A page of a literary magazine with this poem:

Rondelet of beloved things remembered amid strong aversion to numerous other things, e.g. cruciferous vegetables, the smell of food left on a burner, the smell of scented trash bags or of sausages, the need of going to work

Damselflies, silverbells,
raspberries, lizards’ throats.
Damselflies, silverbells,
every kind of flower’s smell;
to lie down in cool sheets,
to be lain upon by cats—
damselflies, silverbells.

Anna Lena Phillips Bell

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Anna Lena @aproflection.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

THE WORLD IS NOT IN HERE. I've made a thing, which I think is useful, and today I'm sharing it! Forces of Attention no. 1, second edition, can be ordered via Indiegogo: igg.me/at/forces-of... I have gift wrap too if you like—and will send out orders placed by this Sunday early next week. ✨

A folded paper enclosure printed with red and black text reading THE WORLD IS NOT IN HERE, forces of attention no. 1, holds two letterpress-printed strips of white paper, each of which reads "the world is not in here."

An Apple laptop and an iPad are stacked on top of each other on a white cloth. Each device bears a white paper sign that reads "the world is not in here."

A close up of three rolls of gift wrap in vintage patterns: pink roses on a red ground, red poinsettias on a white ground, and pastel irises and butterflies on a background of leaves

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Anna Lena @aproflection.bsky.social · 27/10/2024

I like this holiday! Here is a small poem of mine first published in the Sewanee Review. Thanks for keeping the poems in the air in here, @tomsnarsky.bsky.social ✨ #smallpoemsunday

Against Stoicism

An itch, untouched,
will twitch and wail

till an answering scratch
unhitches hell.

A tempered squeal
can conjure oil.

Squeak, wheel.
You may as well.

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