Quotidian language, normative life and all the taken-for-granted perceptions of the world are the focus of Stephanie Gray’s riveting and profoundly philosophical book, Shorthand and Electric Language Stars. Whether by rhythmic intonation of throwaway phrases that expose alternative meaning, or unraveling of common assumptions of class, feminism and queerness in the deep substructures of the social -- the poems and look-again images reveal hidden truths that deeply unsettle "we thought we knew/what we knew we thought", ripping open charged spaces of "reading between the lines" and leading readers on the best kind of poetic journey: seeing the world anew in one of the most distinctly complex and unique voices in innovative poetry today. If it is possible to be "ambushed by revelation" 24/7, this book is 100% it: you will have no chance to go back to thinking as you have before -- and isn't that the best kind of poetry?


Shorthand and Electric Language Stars is poet-filmmaker Stephanie Gray’s second full-length collection of poetry. PPYYL also published Gray’s first chapbook, I Thought You Said It Was Sound/How Does That Sound? (2012). Argos Books will publish her second chapbook, A Country Road Going Back in Your Direction in 2015. Her first book, Heart Stoner Bingo, was published by Straw Gate Books in 2007. Journals her poetry has been published in include Aufgabe, Sentence, EOAGH, Esque, Boog City, 2nd Avenue Poetry, Brooklyn Rail, VLAK, The Recluse, Poems By Sunday, Everyday Genius, among others. She often reads poetic texts live with her films, and has performed at the Poetry Project, Segue, Triptych series in NYC, among other series. Her critical work has been published in Jacket2, Reconstruction, and Futurepost. Her films have screened internationally at fests such as Oberhausen, Viennale, Mediafriesland, Antimatter, Ann Arbor, Chicago Underground, Inside Out, Outfest, Frameline and at NYC venues such as Microscope Gallery, Millennium Film Workshop, and Mono No Aware, along with a retrospective at Anthology Film Archives in June 2015.