Author Description

Great Gatsby meets Chaucerian legend in "Illicit Kingdom," a poem that explores the intoxicating illusion of living in a too-good-to-be-true fantasy world with someone who can never see eye to eye with you. The opening stanza melds naturalistic imagery with diction suggestive of a fairytale landscape, and as the poem progresses, the narrator becomes increasingly disillusioned with the metaphorical kingdom she has created for herself, eventually emerging into the real world and learning to fend for herself. Illicit Kingdom is the title poem of Liza Libes's latest poetry collection. Building on her previous two collections, Broken Weekend and Vintage Lovers, Libes crafts a masterful array of scenes marked by desire and disillusionment that address what it means to be a woman in contemporary society—and what it means to find a voice as one. Illicit Kingdom is a meditation on longing, growing up, and aging that establishes Libes as a mature poet who has found a place amongst her contemporaries. Illicit Kingdom is her third poetry collection. ~ Liza received her B.A. and M.A. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University, where she studied the poetry of Sylvia Plath and T.S. Eliot respectively. Shortly after, she founded The Pens and Poison Project to promote the literary arts and to foster appreciation for the written word. Pens and Poison has reached over 200k poetry lovers across the world through engaging YouTube, Instagram, and Spotify content and continues to draw in new literary lovers on a daily basis. In 2024, Liza unveiled Pens and Poison Magazine to provide young poets and writers with a platform for their work. Liza has published three poetry collections, Broken Weekend, Vintage Lovers, and Illicit Kingdom, and is currently at work on her fourth poetry collection, Girl Soldier. Her work, which frequently addresses themes of female identity, Judaism, and desire, has appeared in literary journals and online magazines such a