“Joyful Orphan is skilled, masterful work.”

—Sherwin Bitsui, Navajo writer and poet, author of Flood Song

“This collection is a deft and elegant lyric address, beautifully inclusive, to all the issues now of greatest concern.”

—Donald Revell, professor of English, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and author of The English Boat

“Joyful Orphan is a beautiful book of poems that, while quiet and often domestic, have a long, larger view.”

—Sasha Steensen, professor of English, Colorado State University, and author of House of Deer

“Joyful Orphan raises the question of belonging, and chooses the position of the orphan, who in Mark Irwin’s ecstatic poems, finds home everywhere. Who goes farther than that?”

—Claudia Keelan, professor of English, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, editor of Interim, and author of eight collections of poetry, including We Step into the Sea

• The book covers a wide range of contemporary topics, including species and habitat extinction, the Anthropocene era, metropolis and wilderness collision, war, poverty, the incursion of technology, history, and race.

• The title is a reference to the human struggle to survive during the pandemic while living in the Anthropocene era.