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The Elsewhere Oracle

$45.00

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ISBN: 9781625571939
Catalog: Black Lawrence Press
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Reviews & Media Interview in BOMBReview in RHINOInterview in THE COLORADO POETMS. MAGAZINE: The Best Poetry of 2024 and 2025
Categories Merch, Poetry

The Elsewhere Oracle

Michele Battiste

Publication Date: August 12, 2025

Description

Finalist for the 2026 High Plains International Book Award in Poetry

Longlist finalist for the 2025 Julie Suk Award

“Battiste’s The Elsewhere Oracle bridges lyric, artifact, and instrument. It stands among the most original poetry projects of the year: an invitation to listen differently, to draw a card, to begin again.”

— RHINO

The town of Elsewhere has been lost to time. Hidden by a remote mountain, Elsewhere is unreachable to the outside world, its history and townspeople the stuff of ghost stories and cautionary tales.

Packaged in a stunning box in the shape of a hardcover book, The Elsewhere Oracle is a special collection and literary artifact. Each poem and accompanying oracle card represent a person, place, or item from Elsewhere. Together they tell the story of the forgotten town: the history of its disappearance, the ghosts that haunt its streets, and the monsters that linger in the woods and the lake. Here we encounter an inept town council, a perceptive orphan, a yearning torch singer, the robber baron who holds the town in his lunatic hands, and a whole host of characters embodying the best and worst of a community. Looking to Elsewhere, we can discover our own strengths and fears, ambitions and dreams, and the dark places that hold us back.

Praise

The Elsewhere Oracle by Michele Battiste is a lyrical and evocative guidebook and deck that invites readers into a nuanced exploration of life’s mysteries and complexities. Weaving together the art of poetry with oracular insights, each card unveils the poignant possibilities that surround us. A beautifully crafted tool for reflection, The Elsewhere Oracle reveals the many paths we might travel in order to encounter ourselves.

–Selah Saterstrom, author of Ideal Suggestions and Slab

An invitation to embrace possibility, a codex of poetic properties and imagery that connects the self with the natural world: Michele Battiste’s The Elsewhere Oracle encourages readers to author their own lives. With evocative poetry and striking vintage artwork, Battiste provides readers with an opportunity for self-discovery and transformation, to find meaning and paths forward, and to locate wisdom in the face of uncertainty through divinatory inquiry. Gorgeous, generous, and insightful.

–Hoa Nguyen, author of A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure

In The Elsewhere Oracle, a wildly inventive chorus urges us to reconsider our relationship to nature, society, and self. With perspectives as varied as The Gunsmith, The Compass, and The Wolves, Michele Battiste’s poems and oracles bring to life the complex stories we have set aside elsewhere. When asked to plumb the green depths of The Lake, we discover perspectives that often subvert our expectations: “Beneath your surface is a seed of great strength, force, and change.” This collection is perfect for anyone looking to shift their energy or get unstuck–with each turn of a card or page comes a new revelation, the opportunity to turn a new leaf.

–Hyejung Kook, Editor, Barahm Press

A mysterious mountain that exists just beyond the boundaries of town and our senses–and the many ghosts of that place and those who have attempted to venture there–are brought into a kind of haunted knowledge via richly-imaged cards and poetic + oracular guidance. Each entity (card) opens a portal into a deeper knowing of self and the world(s) we inhabit, providing insight into the past, present, and towards our shared future. Through The Elsewhere Oracle, Michele Battiste reminds us of the here that is always here but often obscured behind shadows, polished surfaces, and our own reluctance to see.

–Megan Kaminski, author of Prairie Divination and Gentlewomen

About the Author

Michele Battiste

Michele Battiste's third book of poems, Waiting for the Wreck to Burn (2019), won the Louise Bogan Award for Excellence in Poetry from Trio House Press. Her next book, The Elsewhere Oracle, doubles as an oracle deck and will be released in 2025 by Black Lawrence Press. She is also the author of several chapbooks, and her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in a wide array of journals and anthologies, including American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Rain Taxi, the Rumpus, and Beloit Poetry Journal. Michele earned an MA in English from the University at Albany and an MFA in Creative Writing from Wichita State University. She loves silent discos, large bodies of water, the brown bear cam at Katmai National Park, space buns, and parlor games. She lives in Colorado where she raises money to tackle climate change and protect nature.

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Finalist for the 2026 High Plains International Book Award in Poetry


Longlist finalist for the 2025 Julie Suk Award

https://youtu.be/X-zPbQWrXTU

"Battiste’s The Elsewhere Oracle bridges lyric, artifact, and instrument. It stands among the most original poetry projects of the year: an invitation to listen differently, to draw a card, to begin again." 


-- RHINO

The town of Elsewhere has been lost to time. Hidden by a remote mountain, Elsewhere is unreachable to the outside world, its history and townspeople the stuff of ghost stories and cautionary tales.

Packaged in a stunning box in the shape of a hardcover book, The Elsewhere Oracle is a special collection and literary artifact. Each poem and accompanying oracle card represent a person, place, or item from Elsewhere. Together they tell the story of the forgotten town: the history of its disappearance, the ghosts that haunt its streets, and the monsters that linger in the woods and the lake. Here we encounter an inept town council, a perceptive orphan, a yearning torch singer, the robber baron who holds the town in his lunatic hands, and a whole host of characters embodying the best and worst of a community. Looking to Elsewhere, we can discover our own strengths and fears, ambitions and dreams, and the dark places that hold us back."
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