Going forward, I’ll be posting about my works individually as they are newly-published and available for order or preorder, but since I’ve started this Substack much later than my first works, I’ve decided to make this list describing what I’ve created and released so far.
All Dogs Go To Heaven, But I’m Not A Dog And This Isn’t A Movie - released in 2018, this was my first collection of poetry compiled into a chapbook. Although I don’t connect with it like I do some of my other projects, and my writing style has evolved a lot since then, its title will always resonate with me. This collection features poems written while in the midst of, and about, experiences during a long-term toxic relationship with my first young love.
MEMOIRS DISTORTED - a poetic visual art zine exploring photomanipulation to look at a dissociative nostalgia through a distorted perspective. Released in 2021. After the loss of a long-time best friend, and leaving a toxic long-term relationship with someone teenage-me thought I could see myself with forever, looking back on old photographs from various times of my life in which I was close with these two individuals brought up some conflicting nostalgic feelings that I needed an outlet to express. Thus, this chapbook was born.
jetpack magazine - a full-color photographic magazine displaying images of graffiti from Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Issue 1 released in March 2022 and issue 2 released in June 2022. I’m a simple gal - I see graffiti, I take a flick of it, I put those flicks in a magazine. Issue 3 has been on pause for quite some time, as I prefer sorting my images and working on this project via a computer, and I hadn’t had one for quite a while. I do hope to offer a third issue soon - and am accepting photo submissions from any area of New England. jpzine.png@gmail.com
HOLLOW BODIES - released 2022. “Volatile and brutal, HOLLOW BODIES explores a volatile relationship with the self through authentic poetry and visual art. Each line is a whirlwind - heartbreaking, raw, and potent. Parz’s stylistic voice is intimate and merciless. An excruciating and honest experience of love and hatred, this collection will leave you breathless, exposed, and hollow.” -Violet Woods,
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QUARTZ JAWS - released 2022.
“QUARTZ JAWS is a hot-blooded exploration of human relationships and the concept of being at home. With honest words and beautiful detail, V.L. Parz invites readers to reflect on what it means to survive this world, even as it takes a bite out of us. I recommend it wholeheartedly.” - Adrienne Rozells, author of Caryatid Heart (Alien Buddha Press 2022) and Editor-in-Chief of Catchwater Magazine.
“What does it mean to crave a barren wasteland of a lover? This is the wasteland QUARTZ JAWS seeks to explore: the dichotomy of starving & feeding; what it means to be wanted & wanting & eaten. The badlands of Parz, no matter how overgrown, ache with a rotting emptiness: the yearning of a speaker to return to the earth where they can nourish & be nourished.” - Amy Jannotti, author of VULGARSWEET (GutSlut Press).
FALSE IDOLS - released 2022.
“Daddy issues started with God, and V.L. Parz is not afraid to say it. Parz has crafted in these visceral poems a new scripture, equal parts diatribe & lament. FALSE IDOLS is condemnation; a wound that spits back; a provocation of a God that made us wrong, from broken ribs; who rubbed our matted feathers in dirt. But even moreso, it is a promise: to love & find solace in other broken creatures; to persist, even if out of spite.” - Amy Jannotti, author of VULGARSWEET (GutSlut Press).
“FALSE IDOLS is a read that makes me feel dark and desperate, even as it makes me want more. Through the shape and sound of her poems, V.L. Parz asks readers to consider how we love and worship our own gods, and which ones truly deserve it. I recommend it for any reader looking to understand their world a little bit better.” - Adrienne Rozells, author of Caryatid Heart (Alien Buddha Press 2022) and Editor-in-Chief of Catchwater Magazine.
DON’T FORGET TO CALL HOME - released 2022.
“V.L. Parz's DON’T FORGET TO CALL HOME is a gut-wrenching collection of poems and images that reach out from page, grab your shoulders and shake you til your bones rattle. The words and images entwine and entrance you into experiencing a ghostly yet painfully alive collection. There is a central yearning in its pages; a yearning for blackout, a yearning for waking up, a yearning for finding a home in a body, somehow, finally, maybe? Electric and visually hypnotic, DON’T FORGET TO CALL HOME is a dip into an alternative dimension that is at once viscerally familiar and startlingly alluring.” - Dre Levant, author of a glass orange
“In DON'T FORGET TO CALL HOME, V.L. Parz transports you back to the stomach drop flutter of a boy with a sly smile and tipping point beer meeting your eye and nudging your hand. This is poetry on the precipice of willing and un that makes you sit nervous in that back field again. Stars distant as parents, car too far and too not yours; a risk of it's own. Night too late and still just becoming. The fire and the wanting float in collusion. The morning is never. This night belongs to the already burned.” - Katharine Blair, kith books
COLORS: THE MAGAZINE - 2023. COLORS is a bimonthly arts and literary magazine displaying works inspired by a monochromatic color palette. THE PINK ISSUE released February 2023, THE BLUE ISSUE released April 2023, and THE GREEN ISSUE released June 2023. THE AMBER ISSUE is open for submissions. More information is posted in my Substack section “COLORS: THE MAGAZINE.”