"Cultural brujeria, sacrilegious litanies, ritualized births, and letters from hearts and/or brains populate Rachel McKibben's world in blud"--

"Throughout [BLUD], McKibbens breathes brilliant life into language, forging lush, rhythmic poems that are both fiercely urgent and tightly controlled, dark and flickering with fairy-tale-like magic. . . . Stunning, unflinching, fearless."―Booklist Starred Review "Chicana poet, activist, and witchy folk hero of the disenfranchised. . . . [McKibbens] creates these spaces of witness with her feral and boundary-pushing poems that speak unflinchingly of topics often swept under the rug: rape, domestic violence, body shaming, mental illness, prejudice."—Ploughshares "McKibbens, a pioneer in the art of performance poetry, presents her audience [with] selfless honesty."—The Rumpus "Rachel McKibbens . . . reminds us why poetry as testimony is so necessary." —Poetry Foundation McKibbens's blud is a collection of dark, rhythmic poems interested in the ways in which inherited things—bloodlines, mental illnesses, trauma—affect their inheritors. Reveling in form and sound, McKibbens's writing takes back control, undaunted by the idea of sinking its teeth into the ugliest moments of life, while still believing—and looking for—the good underneath all the bruising. From "untitled (lost love)": To my daughters I need to say: Go with the one who loves you biblically. The one whose love lifts its head to you despite its broken neck. Whose body bursts sixteen arms electric to carry you, gentle the way old grief is gentle. Love the love that is messy in all its too much . . . Rachel McKibbens is a poet, activist, playwright, essayist, and two-time New York Foundation for the Arts poetry fellow. She is the author of four books and founder of The Pink Door, an annual writing retreat open exclusively to women of color. She lives in Rochester, New York.

Winner, 2020 Miller Williams Poetry Prize Winner, 2020-2021 Northeastern Minnesota Book Award In this long poem—almost a novel-in-verse—Jayson Iwen examines the intimate thoughts and feelings of two would-be poets: Roze Mertha, a teenage girl growing up in a trailer park, and William Blud, a veteran navigating age and loneliness in an apartment he shares with an Afghan refugee. Deftly crafting distinct voices for these characters in the upper midwestern terrain they inhabit, Iwen explores the quiet heartbreak and tenderly treasured experiences of two apparently unremarkable people using poetry to understand a world that doesn’t make much space for them.

Dawson's darkly tempting debut drops her unsuspecting heroine into a strange faraway land for a romantic adventure that's part paranormal, part steampunk . . . and completely irresistible. Original.