"A serious young man, / I had trouble saying yes / to the bright, clear days," Soren Stockman's Elephant begins. The poems that follow move through despair, self-destruction, and disassociation to arrive, finally, at that elusive affirmation. Accompanied throughout by the imagined presence of Joseph Merrick, the 20th Century entertainer and medical patient popularly depicted as "The Elephant Man," Stockman's speaker interrogates how storytellers have co-opted Merrick's identity and obscured his voice and inner life. In this projected communion, Stockman tries to encounter the man who was rather than the role molded from his experiences. What does it mean to perform as another? What allows us to love ourselves, and what makes it hard? This debut collection is a path out of loneliness, beyond private absences, to the true self and what it harbors in its heart. Here, at the center of things, we succumb to the succor of existence, given to the light: "What a blessing to love the world / and then finally be born."
 

Soren Stockman's poems have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Bennington Review, BOAAT, Columbia Journal, H.O.W. Journal, The Iowa Review, The Literary Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Narrative, Painted Bride Quarterly, the PEN Poetry Series, The Recluse, Redivider, St. Petersburg Review, Southword Journal, Tin House, and Tupelo Quarterly, among others, while his prose has appeared in The Fanzine, Kenyon Review Online, and Playboy. His work was awarded First Place in the Narrative 30 Below Contest and was twice named a finalist for both the New Letters Prize for Poetry and the Tupelo Quarterly Poetry Prize, and has otherwise been a finalist in contests for Bellevue Literary Review, Cutbank Literary Journal, Gulf Coast, Memorious, and The Paris-American. Performance credits include "John Merrick" in The Elephant Man at the Wings Theater (2010), and more recently "Victor Pistachio" in Bloodshot (2020) and Bloodshot: The Call (2021), part of the Exponential Festival at Target Margin Theater Brooklyn, NY. Stockman is the recipient of fellowships from the Gloucester Writers Center, the Lacawac Artists' Residency, New York University, the New York State Summer Writers Institute, and the Ucross Foundation. Elephant is his debut collection of poems.