CLAIRE WILKS was a downtown poet in New York City in the 1970’s. This is her lost collection of poems, which were recently discovered and published 36-years after she was murdered.



“Seeing Claire Wilks’ poems after so many years is like seeing New York City in the turbulent, exuberant times we shared, when being young and an artist was everything, and the Only Thing! I see her: Claire, the quintessence of New York poetry — fierce, enraged, ecstatic, iconoclastic. And now that we finally have "Drunken Oasis," she will be forever remembered in her prime.” -- BOB HOLMAN, winner of the American Book Award for "Aloud! Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café"



“'Drunken Oasis' is an honest love song that calls you back to the 1970s. By honest, I mean beautiful, complicated, and heartbreaking. It is a journey of flawed love and the contradictions of revolt. And like all remarkable art, it somehow becomes your story. One where the reader and author together must search for redemption.” - JON SANDS, poet, author of "The New Clean"