if: prey, then: huntress

• A Publishers Weekly 'Most Notable Poetry' selection in the Spring 2026 Preview

In her much-anticipated debut collection, Christina Shah captures the landscape of heavy industry through the perceptive eyes of a poet.

From a poet working in heavy industry comes an eclectic collection of observations and experiences as a woman on the road and out in the field in traditionally male-dominated environments. if: prey, then: huntress is an exploration of vulnerability, agency and existential homelessness, replete with portraits of beer drinkers and hellraisers and urban landscapes. These poems illuminate the beauty and truth amid the concrete, twisted metal and scraped knuckles.

At a time when many countries are reimagining their resource-based economies, Shah’s poems position her as a wandering eulogist for old industrial ways of knowing—and for their greying practitioners in the mines, paper mills, shipyards and scrapyards that undergird modern life. The reader is invited into a world that, like the breath, is both dying and being born every minute.