what else 
is there to do
but witness
this world’s
precarious
devotion?

Confirmation bias is the tendency to interpret new evidence in support of one's existing beliefs or theories. In her stunning debut poetry collection, Ivanna Baranova excavates notions of evidence, existence, and resiliency in an attempt to transcend the beliefs that demand our psychic reproduction. Desire, affect, anger, and healing collide in Baranova’s metaphysical observations of her lived experiences―feminine conditioning, racialization, Slavic and Latinx diaspora, experimental therapy, and nausea under capitalist hegemony. Whether through the lens of astrology or philosophy, algorithms or substance use, CONFIRMATION BIAS considers the obstacles of being, relating, and rebuilding in the face of sociocultural fragmentation and imminent global collapse. The resulting poems are bright with insight, crackling with humour and idiom, and burning with unforgettable intellect, authenticity, and compassion.

Ivanna Baranova is a Guatemalan-Slovak poet, writer, photographer, and interdisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles via the Pacific Northwest. She is a graduate of the University of British Columbia, with a Bachelor’s in Philosophy, Social Theory, and Creative Writing. Her work has appeared in Asphalte Magazine, Cixous 72, Jubilat, Peach Mag, Newest York, Room Magazine, and elsewhere. She works at The Poetry Project.

POETRY

144 pages

Perfect-bound

Holographic foil elements on front/back cover

Cover design | Marcela Huerta

Editor | Domenica Martinello

ISBN |  978-1-988355-19-1

Fall 2019

Blurbs

“Electrifying, dynamic, buzzing, rollicking, immediate. A poetry that animates the body and swerves through time and space to meditate on the spiritual, the social, the erotic-grotesque, Ivanna Baranova’s CONFIRMATION BIAS offers a compelling reason to think that art might be able to help us survive the doom-pit of capital and environmental collapse.  This is a love poem to the sensory overload of the city, the state and nature. CONFIRMATION BIAS is a poetry for the damaged condition of the “electric throng of people animals” who feel too much or feel, who cannot look away from the damage that consumes us all.”

- Daniel Borzutzky, author of The Performance of Becoming Human (Winner of the 2016 National Book Award for Poetry)

“Ivanna Baranova’s stunning new book, CONFIRMATION BIAS, unreels sharp, unruly ribbons of language, relaying poetic signals from a Spicerian “Outside” with Piscean candor and intensity. This is a gorgeous, challenging, transformative and necessary work of writing. I love this book!”

- Elaine Kahn, author of Women in Public

“Here is poetry as intervention. Intervention in every meaning of the word. Feast upon these enjambments that confirm every bias you thought you had outsmarted. Baranova got there first.”

- Marwa Helal, author of Invasive species

“Baranova's poems feel entirely of this moment: kind, intimately political, narrated by a mind that knows astrology. This collection is shimmery, bare and strong like an iridescent fish still in water. It made me feel better about being alive.”

- Charlotte Shane, author of Prostitute Laundry

Excerpts

Peach Mag | aloe

ÄLPHÄ | lisbon imagined, water signs

PRISM International | powerade

Colombia Journal | halfway

Press

Indie Book Review Podcast | Conscious on Another Level

Los Angeles Review of Books | Precarious Devotion: A Conversation with Ivanna Baranova | "[Baranova's] poetry drifts through our current age of precarity by exploring longing, existential ennui, joy, and connection with all lenses on hand — astrology, psychology, mysticism, drugs, academic frameworks. But more importantly she writes from an indefatigable source of light, dark, and fire."

Poetry Foundation | Love Without Emergency

Poets & Writers | Poetic Lenses: Our Fifteenth Annual Look at Debut Poetry | Marwa Helal

Newest York | Jeesee Lee in Conversation with Ivanna Baranova | "The subjective moments in CONFIRMATION BIAS help mirror the ways we all aim to transcend our psychic ruts and metaphysical limitations."

rob mcclennan | "[Ivanna Baranova] writes as witness, critic and relentless seeker, exploring power structures, capitalism and environmental collapse, moving seamlessly from abstract to the specific, and attempting as much the appropriate questions as she is the possibility of answers."

Soliloquies Anthology | "Ivanna Baranova’s CONFIRMATION BIAS explores the role of memory, rituals, technology, and emotions while meditating on moments when we get tired of ourselves, we forget ourselves, and we remember ourselves."

The /tƐmz/ Review | "CONFIRMATION BIAS is an example of poetry that reaches beyond the form’s supposedly limited readership, breaking rules as it says what it means."