GIOVANNI BOSKOVICH

DEBUT COLLECTION AVAILABLE VIA MOON TIDE PRESS

The Tautology of Water, Giovanni Boskovich’s debut book of poems, focuses on intersecting bodies of water and bloodlines, while exploring topics as wide-ranging as Marcel Proust and the byzantine nature of Los Angeles freeways. The book functions as an ersatz field guide to his native Southern California, but more specifically a tribute to the interstitial, overlooked towns of his youth.

MOONTIDEPRESS.COM



POETRY 

Debut Collection
The Tautology of Water, Moon Tide Press 

BROKEN LENS JOURNAL
Naples (for Cookie Mueller)

ARTEIDOLIA PRESS
Cassavetes’ Underpainting - Cherries - Colloquy - Lavender Tea

THE BIG WINDOWS REVIEW
Topanga Ranch Motel

CALIFORNIA STATE POETRY SOCIETY
Lines Composed Above Cabrillo Beach

SANTA BARBARA LITERARY JOURNAL Ophelia, Imagined Somewhere in Los Angeles -
Sonnet - Drowning

BLUE PRESS UK (FORTHCOMING JULY 2025)



BIOGRAPHY

Giovanni Boskovich (b. 1985) is a poet and educator born and raised in San Pedro, California. He holds an MA in Literature from California State University Dominguez Hills where he published a thesis on Emily Dickinson.  His work has appeared in California Quarterly, Arteidolia Press, the Santa Barbara Literary Journal, Big Windows Review, POETiCA REVIEW, Broken Lens Journal, and Five Nine (forthcoming). His first full-length poetry collection, The Tautology of Water, is now available via Moon Tide Press. In his free time, he surfs anywhere from Cabrillo Beach to Topanga. 



BOOK REVIEWS OF THE TAUTOLOGY OF WATER


A strange accomplishment: Boskovich's poems come audaciously phrased while simultaneously imbuing an air of tranquility. His writing transports the reader to a time of misty-eyed romantic tradition, and feels a palliative to the modern swell of navel-gazing alt-lit irony.

    —Clark Allen, publisher, Five Nine Press


Giovanni Boskovich's The Tautology of Water is a liquid feast of lyricism and musicality that snakes through the meandering streets, alleys, and walkways of beloved cityscapes and coastal enclaves, spanning continents and oceans. As Boskovich embarks on journeys through these various geographies, he aims to remind us of the innate beauty inherent in the ruptures between modernity and antiquity that surrounds us, asking the reader "What is this colloquy between absence and presence?" It is in these moments of ample silence where The Tautology of Water thrives, singing in this liminal space and flourishing in the disconnection from the din of the attention economy, beckoning the reader to slip away and join the conversation.

    — Adam Stutz, author of The Sham Tapestry
  CONTACT

giovanni.boskovich@gmail.com

Lives and works in Los Angeles, California

THE RESIDENTS

The arch of bougainvillea, 
slowly, brimming with summer’s 
luxuriance, turned into a wall, 
barring the entrance to our home. 
It happened overnight, she said, 
eying nature’s handiwork,
its legerdemain.

There are other ways to egress, 
ingress, though: backdoors,
side doors, the garage —
I once even wormed through
the French windows,
moonlight, chiaroscuro,
creeping into our spare bedroom, 
to avoid the spiders
who’d made their homes
in sundry petals, mauvish and 
swollen with California sun.

Defaulting numerous
times on payment to our gardeners, 
we huddled together below,
alongside attendant tools —
pruning shears and saws, rakes, 
dirt-clod gloves — as our gaze traveled 
up the wall, like serpentine vines,
the moon and nature’s residents
cooly watching us from above.



OPHELIA, IMAGINED SOMEWHERE IN LOS ANGELES

You’ve had too much to drink — not to mention the blackmarket powder, the name of which changes like the tide: licit one day, illicit the next. Ophelia, you drowned in a kidney-shaped swimming pool, indifferent maids, undocumented and paid cash (under-the-table), just off the clock, sitting at a conspicuously placed bus stop in a tony neighborhood somewhere in the hills (you choose; it doesn’t matter). No one uses these public reliquaries, the bus stops, that is — the help, according to the rich, are only synecdochically relevant (e.g., lend me a hand, an ear, perambulate my children, teach them your tongue; hold yours, etc). I’ve never seen a rich person use the bus in these sinuous hills, especially in Los Angeles, a place where cars (new, semi-electric, electric, imagined, flying, classic, lowrider, jalopy, 80s, Yotas) are all better than schlepping the bus. I eye them as I drive through these hills towards San Pedro. And you, Ophelia: No self-coronated diadem of nettles or daisies. Too much water. Bougainvillea, whispering with sibilance, watched you (the maids, as I said, are waiting for their respective terminuses: Carson, San Pedro, Wilmington), heavy with drink, as you mermaided your way to the deep end, like lagan, for us to find you, again and again.



LINES COMPOSED ABOVE CABRILLO BEACH
A swath of birds
sits upon a becalmed sea, 
a respite from the doldrums 
of transpacific travel.
These creatures rest, 
husbanding energy, 
snorkeling for snacks, 
mackerel, small fish.

A dolphin party appears 
fashionably late
for the binoculared man 
who, with morning coffee, 
vacillates between newspaper 
and sea-news.
Ocean headlines say:
Area Dolphins Frolic
While White Crane
Alights on Abalone Shell.

A lone surfer drifts out,
 each wave a comma,
or whispered parentheses.

Perhaps nature will usurp man
and dolphins will reign supreme 
and the white-craned question mark 
of the bird’s neck will ask us:

What now?
What now, creatures?

---

GB