Upon Arrival was Paula Cisewski's debut full-length collection. Her second, Ghost Fargo, was selected by Franz Wright for the Nightboat Poetry Prize. She is also the author of The Threatened Everything (Burnside Review Books), quitter (winner of the Diode Editions Poetry Prize), Ceremonies for No Repair (Beauty School Editions), The Becoming Game (Hanging Loose Press 2025), and several chapbooks.

A teacher, editor, artist, and frequent curator of literary and multimedia events, Paula worked in warehouses, was an artist mentor with Minneapolis teens, owned a coffee shop, and waited one million tables while raising her son and earning her BA from St. Catherine's University and her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She lives in Minneapolis.

Praise

Paula Cisewski loves language. Language and metaphor in the face of human heartbreak and desire. 'I am now prepared / to feel my way down the dark sides…' she writes, 'And still, we flew.' Language and metaphor in the face of loneliness and sorrow. 'A trainwreck,' she writes, 'that for eternity never / happens is perfect because / the brakes fail and fail and / still it smokes down / tracks that run through / a small town in me.' Such a refreshing, distinctive first book of poems.

—Ralph Angel

The verbal search for unknown finality is in these poems, the odd little bird who cocks her head to the side while singing to herself is in these poems, and the sound of circulating blood, and all manner of edgy fragile other things that make the reader feel lucky–for listening is inherently lucky, and these poems bear that gift.

—Mary Ruefle

[Upon Arrival] opens with 'All the Way Home' a brilliant, pioneering piece suited for the beginning of the book because it suggests the collection’s underlying purpose as a poetical expedition and gives a colorful glimpse of the poet. Cisewski introduces herself as a feisty and bright writer who embraces her flaws as elements of a jaded perfection…

—Verse magazine