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In a twisting and kinetic poetry, Multicene is a work of processing, of working through the various locations, affects, and experiences that materialize our overlapping interactions with climate change. It forms a poetry about a living and dying world, a planet of extraction and joy, and the earth that feels all of that. The circulation of experience and language is tangled into a work that is both exacting and slippery across every poem where the weather, landscapes, coal mines, idling cars, and flowers shape the world of Nicodemus’s work, and in Multicene we see the opening of new ways of encountering our climate presents, pasts, and futures.
“Nicodemus Nicoludis's gorgeous debut Multicene meditates on eco-grief, the weather, and intimacy as loss. His poetry—which fledges itself alongside Lisa Robertson, George Oppen, Forrest Gander, and Richard Brautigan—feels like a tsunami washing away the shore. A copy of this book should be included in every climate doomsday kit and upon the shelf of any poet entering life after the Anthropocene.”
Claire Donato
“In Multicene, Nicodemus Nicoludis’ involute debut collection of poems, the Earth is not given to us to think about, but it is the Earth that has yielded this thinking itself, “the world in catastrophe humming out / morbid centos in patterns of weather.” I love this realignment of poetic vision where “[every] night the Earth rewrites this poem” and “blooming nowtopias / spontaneously [graft] / free will onto / the side of a highway.” From the strange hope of its opening strophes to its magnificent final long poem, “The Weather,” Multicene tracks the vitality in the quickening spiral of climate disaster, never catastrophizing nor didactic but “[finding] something worth living for / if only to produce more living…”
Ted Dodson
“In this very thoughtful and loving book, the speaker tells us: “I am dressed up / like a poet / And I am dreaming / of staying awake / for days to work,” and we quickly discover this important work of the Multicene is nothing other than the interrogation “of deep time.” The implicit politics shot through these gorgeous and multifaceted poems preform a kind of pyscho-ecology. That is to say, consciousness itself is equally a form of the “natural” world. Nicodemus Nicoludis is a highly gifted poet, the nuanced thoughtfulness in every line is hard-won and moving. It is a stunning debut.”
Peter Gizzi