Mare's Nest

Thelatest installment in the Sarabande Series in Kentucky Literature, Mare’s Nest explores a Kentucky horse farm in its turbulent beginnings.

From Kentuckynative and Brooklyn-based poet Holly Mitchell, Mare’s Nest troubles the meaning of a racehorse, in particular thebroodmare and the foals she carries. Reaching from the photographic experimentof Muybridge’s "The Horse in Motion" to Patti Smith’s album Horses, Mitchell touches upon history, dreams, Southern familystories, and queer adolescence in the early aughts.

Colloquiallyreferring to a muddled situation or an illusory discovery, the term “mare’snest” can also refer quite literally to the soft depression left by a horselying in grass. And so the idea of a “mare’s nest," in all of its linguisticpotential, serves as the central focus for Holly Mitchell’s meditative debut.