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Twin Lead Lines, the remarkably original debut from poet and Styrofoam Winos musician Lou Turner, is born of overlaps: those of ancestry and chosen family, of show business and DIY paths of artmaking, and of listening deeply to others and oneself.
Turner's distant cousin and Grand Ole Opry legend Little Jimmy Dickens plays a role in the poems as part-muse, part-foil, and full lode star -- not flawless, but bright -- for the poems to orient around as Turner maps her own voice and calling to artmaking. Dickens is Turner's partner in one of many of the duets played throughout Twin Lead Lines; along with a book-length series of anagram couplets, the twin-lead wire used to transmit radio signals, and the twin lead style of guitar playing made popular by Dickens’ band. Turner deftly moves between traditional and invented forms in these poems, which – like a country song – are by turns funny and searching.
About the author
Lou Turner is a writer and musician (Styrofoam Winos, Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band) based in Nashville, TN. She holds an MFA in poetry from Randolph College and is the author of the chapbook
Shape Note Singing (VA Press, 2021) as well as the editor of
Quarter Notes, a literary magazine with a musical ear. Turner was a 2023 recipient of a solo artist residency from The Cabins, as well as a recipient of a Nashville Metro Arts Thrive Grant. The 2024 winner of The Porch Prize in Poetry, recent poems have appeared in OEI’s Aural Poetics issue,
Voicemail Poems, The
Continental Review,
EcoTheo, and elsewhere. Turner's latest solo record
Microcosmos (SPINSTER) was named a Best Album of 2022 by NPR Music's Ann Powers.
Twin Lead Lines – called “a veritable feat in symphonic composition” by Diana Khoi Nguyen – is her first book.
