Brandi Bird's frank, transcendent poetry explores the concepts of health, language, place, and memory in this long-anticipated debut collection.
Brandi Bird’s long-anticipated debut poetry collection, The All + Flesh, explores the concepts of health, language, place, and memory that connect its author to their chosen kin, blood relatives, and ancestral lands. By examining kinship in broader contexts, these frank, transcendent poems expose binaries that exist inside those relationships, then inspect and tease them apart in the hope of moving toward decolonial future(s). Bird’s work is highly concerned with how outer and inner landscapes move and change within the confines of the English language, particularly the “I” of the self, a tradition of movement that has been lost for many who don’t speak their Indigenous languages or live on their homelands. By exploring the landscapes the poet does inhabit, both internally and externally, Bird’s poems seek to delve into and reflect their cultural lineages—specifically Saulteaux, Cree, and Métis—and how these transformative identities shape the person they are today.
I am made of centuries & carbohydrates
the development of my molars
the hunger the teeth grew
has been with me since childhood
I can’t escape the mouths of others
Brandi Bird's frank, transcendent poetry explores the concepts of health, language, place, and memory in this long-anticipated debut collection.
Brandi Bird’s long-anticipated debut poetry collection, The All + Flesh, explores the concepts of health, language, place, and memory that connect its author to their chosen kin, blood relatives, and ancestral lands. By examining kinship in broader contexts, these frank, transcendent poems expose binaries that exist inside those relationships, then inspect and tease them apart in the hope of moving toward decolonial future(s). Bird’s work is highly concerned with how outer and inner landscapes move and change within the confines of the English language, particularly the “I” of the self, a tradition of movement that has been lost for many who don’t speak their Indigenous languages or live on their homelands. By exploring the landscapes the poet does inhabit, both internally and externally, Bird’s poems seek to delve into and reflect their cultural lineages—specifically Saulteaux, Cree, and Métis—and how these transformative identities shape the person they are today.
I am made of centuries & carbohydrates
the development of my molars
the hunger the teeth grew
has been with me since childhood
I can’t escape the mouths of others
| Published By | House of Anansi Press Inc — Aug 8, 2023 |
| Specifications | 96 pages | 6 in x 8 in |
| Keywords | leanne betasamosake simpson; this accident of being lost; noopiming; billy ray belcourt; ndn coping mechanisms; thomas king; the truth about stories; katherena vermette; the break; indigenous studies; canadian poetry; |
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Excerpt |
| Written By |
BRANDI BIRD is an Indigiqueer Saulteaux, Cree, and Métis writer and editor from Treaty 1 territory. They currently live and learn on the land of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam peoples. Bird’s poems have been published in Catapult, The Puritan, Room Magazine, and others. They are a fourth year BFA student at the University of British Columbia, but their heart is always yearning for the prairies. |
| Written By |
|
BRANDI BIRD is an Indigiqueer Saulteaux, Cree, and Métis writer and editor from Treaty 1 territory. They currently live and learn on the land of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam peoples. Bird’s poems have been published in Catapult, The Puritan, Room Magazine, and others. They are a fourth year BFA student at the University of British Columbia, but their heart is always yearning for the prairies. |
This is Bird’s gospel … They transform prayer into poetry.
” —British Columbia ReviewSince hearing Brandi Bird at a reading in a park in summertime recite the lines, “I know / then that there is hope / until I die & then / there is other / people’s hope,” I have thought about them many times, they have merged with my own consciousness. That’s the power of Bird’s poems—they resonate at such a visceral and cerebral level that they become a part of you. The All + Flesh marks the arrival of an endlessly moving and astounding voice in Indigenous poetry. I, for one, will be reading these poems for the rest of my life.
” —Billy-Ray Belcourt, author of A MINOR CHORUSIn The All + Flesh, Brandi Bird maps the psychic space between ‘NDN compartmentalization’ and split prairies, from bus depots to ‘endocrine storms,’ from LiveJournal to a living history of relocation under land theft. ‘My body is not an empire but first contact happened at / birth’ and ‘I eat / until my mouth needles / the dark.’ With exacting lucidity, Bird’s lyrics chart the body as a reservoir for colonial malice, a site of resistance, and a conduit for a voice that is visceral, immediate, and uncompromising. An absolute triumph of a debut.
” —Liz Howard, author of Letters in a Bruised CosmosA stunning collection with carefully crafted, searing poems that refuse artifice, indirectness, and voyeurism. Brandi Bird writes the experience of illness and Indigeneity into a world that accepts illness only if it perpetuates colonial beauty and body standards, then interrogates the racist systems that disallow care and compassion for Indigenous people. These poems are tender and surprising; they are holes travelling through time and space. They are able to shapeshift God into pills, prayers, seeds, and stars. The All + Flesh has taken root in my mind and I'm happy to let it grow there.
” —Jessica Johns, author of Bad Cree