NICOLETTE COSTANZO

renderings and closure — excerpts from the frog poem project, a book-length manuscript that is structured like a textbook, by Nicolette Costanzo. In this long poem, with the help of illustrations by the artist Alice Lam, Costanzo explores the evocative expression she found embedded in scientific terminology around the body, drawing from research in frog dissection manuals, antique medical handbooks, and surgical gynecological texts.

Nicolette Constanzo holds an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and an MA in Curatorial Studies from Bard College. Under her maiden name, Nicole Pollentier, her poetry has appeared in Bird Dog, Alice Blue, Fourteen Hills, and others, as well as included in the anthologies ¡Floricanto Sí! and Daughters of the Fifth Sun. Awards include a Fulbright Fellowship in Iceland for a poetry and video art project and a writer's residency at Fundación Valparaíso in Mojácar, Spain. She was a semi-finalist for the Sawtooth Poetry Prize from Ahsahta Press and a finalist for the Five Fingers Review Poetry Award. Her first chapbook, smolt, was the winner of the Poesía Tejana award and published by Wings Press. She currently lives in Lockhart, Texas, with her husband and two cats, in a one hundred year old house that they are continually refurbishing. She works at a small, community grocery shop and she is teaching herself to play the ukulele.