Yoni Provenance

YONI PROVENANCE - POEMS BY SUSAN NIEMI & ART BY JOAN GREEN
BEYOND THE VEIL PRESS 2025

Suicide and Mental Health Crisis Line: 988

EXCERPT FROM INTRODUCTION BY SAGE HERRIN

Truly a passion project, Susan Niemi's poems have been a
glimmer of hope in my own reclamation journey. While working
on the marketing for this collection, I found myself returning to
the title poem, Yoni Provenance:

Her name is "Whole. Holy. MINE."
This is not resilience-it's reclamation.

The cover art by Joan Green is breathtaking-a radiant rainbow
yoni glows with energy, vibrant and alive. It appears again inside
the book, layered with Susan's words, becoming something holy,
sacred, and healing. A provenance.

MORE PRAISE FOR YONI PROVENANCE

Susan's poems celebrate this duality. This collection of poems is an exquisite proclamation of her journey transforming self-reproach to self-love. The poems breathe vulnerability, acceptance, courage, hope & pride in the determined journey to heal. She writes of the wisdom of leaning into pain, unraveling the past, and reclaiming restorative joy. Susan's poems sing of the triumph of the human spirit to overcome trauma, as unveiled in Making Mosaics Out of Eggshells: I am both a creator and a healer of trauma, seeking to hold both my chronic ache and joy.

-Kelly Alexander, co-host of Emerging Poets

Susan Niemi is more prophet than poet with incendiary gospels of survival and literary brilliance. She tackles the iron-fisted patriarchy like a prize fighter, fashioning the cauliflower ears of a revered warrior. He Crucified the Child and Grief Travails are two pieces that solidify her legacy as a veteran wordsmith and undaunting believer that there can still be hope after destruction.

The crown jewel of this collection is the brilliant and resounding Making Mosaics Out of Eggshells, in which readers can witness the visual representation of the poem in watercolor by artist Joan Green. In this collection, Susan doesn't allow herself to develop a penchant for victimhood and instead cultivates poignant moments of vulnerability, turning pain into war cries of fierce humanity.

-Eddie Brophy, Hate Is Objective But Horror Fits Everyone and Neurotica for the Modern Doomscroller

Susan Niemi's Yoni Prevenance takes us on a journey of radical self-acceptance by giving voice to what some might consider "unspeakable" traumas, refusing to let them have the last word. Through Susan's heart-wrenchingly vulnerable account of chosen reclamation, we learn just how empowered we all are to shift the narrative of our own lives and untangle from coping mechanisms that no longer serve us. No matter what your relationship is to trauma, Yoni Provenance is a story that deserves to be spoken, listened to, and meditated on.

-Shannon English, Delicate Things