Books
Artwork by Lara Zakoul
BOAT BURNED releaseD with by YesYes Books in Jan 2020
When you burn the boats, retreating, is no longer an option. Boat Burned examines the relationships one is forced to vessel, to family, to faith, to femininity; Boat Burned compares the female form to boat. It interrogates the ways we are taught to woman, questions the model that has been passed down, recounts what the body carries and how the body carries us. It asks what happens when you outgrow both the love and loyalties you were raised to obey and set fire to old identities and beliefs.
This collection explores and echoes themes of: hunger, divorce and distance. Asks why we altar what is absent, how we allow silence to continue to wound. It navigates and interrogates outdated narratives through the role of gender and exposes the complex, often shameful, relationship to one’s body. It examines the ways women have reached outside themselves for power by perpetuating patriarchal structures.
Boat Burned explores womanhood as an act of urgency, with its own language and law. Through an imperative voice and multiple lenses: woman as boat, woman as math problem, woman as storm, it rocks and sways, as you move through from sea to squall, feeling the ocean still calling in your bones. Boat Burned reminds us that, we each are a piece of every boat we've have built and sank. To build a new name, you must burn another.
“I am beyond excited for this brilliant and beautiful collection.”
“This is an urgent new collection from an urgent new voice.”
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Words Ignite is a year-long deep dive into writing and performance, approved by the University of California for the classroom. It includes over 100 poems, writing prompts, and exercises, to help you claim, respond, revise, and perform. These are the tools of poetry, and by the end of the book, you’ll have them mastered.
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“Beautiful, what a gem! Lovely. Incredible book — needs to be in every room, hope, village, street, café, field, roof, living room, corner, cafeteria and art studio! Still floored and unroofed by this book.”
