The Size of Your Joy
The Size of Your Joy is an intimate and empowering exploration of the complex and often contradictory experiences of womanhood, offering an unflinching look at how identity, resilience, and self-worth are shaped by the intersections of love, grief, and longing.
Through the birth of her daughter, the vital yet complicated relationships between the women in her life, and the realities of being a woman in the world, Powers reflects on how ideas of beauty, desire, and shame are quietly passed from one generation to the next, and what it takes to break those cycles. She examines the hunger—for belonging, autonomy, and joy—that women are taught to suppress, while imagining a path forward defined by liberation and self-acceptance.
A celebration of reclamation, The Size of Your Joy asks how we might carry both sorrow and joy, loss and love, as dual forces that shape the stories we inherit and the lives we choose to create. This collection invites readers to embrace joy not as the absence of struggle, but as an act of defiance and hope.
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Specifications
Publisher: Central Avenue Poetry
Publish Date: April 21, 2026
Pages: 160
Type: Paperback
Language: English
Dimensions: 8 × 5.25 inches
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PRAISE FOR THE SIZE OF YOUR JOY
"Each poem felt like a generous treat, and how I wanted to savour them. Elise has such a gift for distilling the complexities of life, love, and longing into a few carefully chosen words. Her poetry is as powerful as it is gentle, the kind that lingers with you long after the page is turned. Her poems took me to so many places in so few lines, a true art, but also kind of magic."
— Jessica Urlichs, author of Beautiful Chaos