Winner, 2024 Indigenous Voices Award for Poetry in English
Finalist, 2024 Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry
Finalist, 2024 League of Canadian Poets' Gerald Lampert Memorial Award
Finalist, 2024 League of Canadian Poets' Raymond Souster Award
Longlist, 2024 League of Canadian Poets' Pat Lowther Memorial Award
CBC Best Poetry of 2024
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 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.
Winner, 2024 Indigenous Voices Award for Poetry in English
Finalist, 2024 Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry
Finalist, 2024 League of Canadian Poets' Gerald Lampert Memorial Award
Finalist, 2024 League of Canadian Poets' Raymond Souster Award
Longlist, 2024 League of Canadian Poets' Pat Lowther Memorial Award
CBC Best Poetry of 2024
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 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.
| 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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Supporting Resources
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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, the Tsleil-Waututh, and the Musqueam peoples (Surrey, B.C). Their debut poetry collection, The All + Flesh (Anansi, 2023), won an Indigenous Voices Award and was a finalist for both the Gerald Lampert and the Governor General’s awards. Brandi Bird is currently completing an MFA at the University of British Columbia. |
| 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, the Tsleil-Waututh, and the Musqueam peoples (Surrey, B.C). Their debut poetry collection, The All + Flesh (Anansi, 2023), won an Indigenous Voices Award and was a finalist for both the Gerald Lampert and the Governor General’s awards. Brandi Bird is currently completing an MFA at the University of British Columbia. |
Winner, Indigenous Voices Award for Poetry in English, 2024
Short-listed, Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry, 2024
Short-listed, League of Canadian Poets' Raymond Souster Award, 2024
Short-listed, League of Canadian Poets' Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, 2024
Long-listed, League of Canadian Poets' Pat Lowther Memorial Award, 2024
Commended, CBC Best Poetry of 2024, 2024
"Drawing on their experience as a queer and Indigenous author, [Brandi Bird reveals], sharply and beautifully, the whiplash of coming of age in a time of contradiction—when reparations and profound systematic failures arrive on the same day." — Literary Review of Canada
” —British Columbia Review"Honest and transformative, these poems portray and reach beyond Prairie landscapes and wounded lives." — Prairie Books NOW
” —"Bird’s clear, forceful voice stacks imagistic snippets in formally inventive poems and leaves the reader to intuit and feel through how they all fit together in an act of engaged, attentive witnessing." — The Tyee
” —"This is Bird’s gospel … They transform prayer into poetry." — British Columbia Review
” —"The All + Flesh is a sophisticated debut work … Over and over again, time is suspended in the poems, and in this state of timelessness, we are able to transcend the limitations of western linearity and thought and to reconnect with relationships that have been stunted or lost. This is an invigorating, liberating read." — Miramichi Reader
” —“Brandi Bird’s first full collection must be read with imagination and heart … With each re-read of this powerful and innovative work, we see more.” — ARC Poetry
” —"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 CHORUS
” —Billy-Ray Belcourt, author of A MINOR CHORUS"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
” —Liz Howard, author of Letters in a Bruised Cosmos"In 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 Cosmos
” —Jessica Johns, author of Bad Cree