Inappropriate Sleepover

Meg Johnson's collection, Inappropriate Sleepover, had me at page one. Her quirky and darkly humorous poems are as refreshing as they are clever, as disarmingly entertaining as they are provocative. Meg Johnson is a stunning addition to the American poetry scene. -Nin Andrews Half siren song, half battle cry, Meg Johnson's Inappropriate Sleepover is a debut collection that coaxes us out of our tightlyzipped sleeping bags and keeps us up until dawn with poems that resonate, beguile, and delight. Equally whimsical and poignant, Johnson's voice introduces us to a new sort of poetry heroine: one who is undaunted by external forces that oppose her, and driven to excavate the most subtle nuances of human connection. These are poems to keep for yourself, and to share with your very best friends. -Mary Biddinger In these poems, Meg Johnson dances on the narrow boundary dividing self-confidence from self-delusion. Always unsettled, her restlessness born from her awareness that the self is too big to fit, even when broken into parts, into the many and ever-proliferating boxes in which a self is expected to find its many homes, her speakers both celebrate and lament the quotidian by which they are enraptured: "If I was a tree I'd / want to be a pine because of the needles. People / would always be finding a piece of me." And the celebrating, and the lamenting, are themselves both enrapturing. -Shane McCrae Meg Johnson was born and raised in Ames, Iowa, and has since lived and worked in various cities. Her poems have appeared in Hobart, The Puritan, San Pedro River Review, Sugar House Review, Wicked Alice, and others. Meg started dancing at a young age and worked professionally in the performing arts for many years. She is currently the editor of Dressing Room Poetry Journal and an M.F.A. candidate in creative writing. Visit her at www.megjohnson.org.