Join Karla Brundage and friends for the launch of her new book, Mixed Tape Book Party and Poetry Reading 

Paradise

Wanda Sabir

Tureedah Mikhel

Kim Shuck

Sara Biel

Kevin Dublin

Maw Shein Win

Zakiyyah G.E. Capehart

Marcus Adeshima Penn

In the full-length poetry collection Blood Lies: Race Trait(or) by Karla Brundage, we find a wholly original clarion voice. This remarkable volume is proof of poetry’s power to illuminate, investigate, invoke. Read this book slowly, in sequence as a story of living at the delta of liminalities and navigating them through the rivers of history, language, lies, and fears born out. In the poem “Octoroon: (noun),” the author examines how language is used to colonize the Black female body: “Great Grandma Maude is quadroon, her mom mulatto, her grandma French / octoroon?/ Why then, do they call out Mulatto?” A case can be made that poetry is akin to the DNA tests, revealing essential truths and ineradicable history, in blood, shame, and beauty. Brundage uses eloquent concision to amplify big mysteries and truths. These poems link together to build a story--the poet's story. In “Underneath,” she writes of early childhood: “The first man to visit me after I was born was/ Eldridge Cleaver and his wife Kathleen/ I remember drawing castles with Angela Davis/ Laying in her lap while my mom gave a speech.” This bold and urgent collection reveals an important voice for social justice, earned insights turned into an intellectual koan. Karla Brundage translates her own journey into poetic testimony. 

–Maw Shein Win, Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn)