Glove Money

Description: Finalist for the 2026 Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Poetry
A hymn to perversity, a lyric pledge to desire and risk, Glove Money pages through the canon to "seed its sugar in your dreams."

In this joyful and irreverent exploration of the role of poet-as lover, Sophia Dahlin plays Sappho, O'Hara, romantics and troubadours, assembling a self seaworthy of romance. With humor and a light touch, Glove Money dismisses bioessentialist gatekeeping and expands the lesbian imaginary.

Review Quotes: "Dahlin has a genius for voice . . . Dahlin's speakers are "overheard" in the way a stage whisper is 'overheard, ' or in the way of that certain brand of flirtation where one says something to a person beside the love object, hoping the beloved will know you're speaking to or about them."--Lindsay Choi, The Poetry Project Newsletter
""Lovechild of a polyamorous poetic parentage--Sappho, Diane di Prima, Robert Frost, Bernadette Mayer, Frank O'Hara, and Anne Carson, among others--Sophia Dahlin writes poems of unabashed sexuality and a voracious, often audacious engagement with the physical world, from space heaters to dahlias."--Lisa Russ Spaar, The Adroit Journal

"Dahlin traverses sapphic lust-spaces and invisible geographies of yearning, positioning the reader within the force-of-the-yearn. Some of these invisible geographies trace the floral planes and seas Sappho might have seen, oceansides, triangles, the space between lovers on the phone; others are more grounded--New York, Oakland, the streets of Berkeley, "school," the Midwest, the airport . . . and, most crucially, the lesbian potential for gender expansion."--Maura Modeya, Annulet

"In our profound social detachment, poetry can reveal the urging to possess and become involved in one's own life, whilst aware of the intrinsic chaos of attempting meaningful involvement when society is increasingly detaching. Whilst this remains a modern problem, we've always considered the individuals dilemma of separation (from the whole) and urge to meaning. . . . Dahlin translates senses through words, homage and acute sensitivity to our greater human mythology."--Candice Daquin, Austin Poetry Review

"There is a lushness to these poems, monologues extended and compact, propelled and performative, offering gestures, agency and an urgency that feels more forceful, even grounded, through being spoken in hushed tones . . . Pay attention to Sophia Dahlin: this collection really is something glorious to behold."--rob mclennan

"Sophia Dahlin's language and sweetly metered pacing perfectly anticipates my feelings, surprising me with how much earnestness I have preserved."--Nora Treatbaby

"Glove Money celebrates friends and lovers, inventing a queer American pastoral whose Sapphic brilliance and subversion lie in just how easily the misbehaved and warmly weird go down."--Jennifer Soong

"I find Sophia Dahlin's poetry to be gentle yet subtly jarring. Her poems split images away from context, letting them add up to something fresh, snappy, delightful."--Judy Grahn