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National Poetry Month: Gabrielle Bates

About Blog Post Apr 8, 2024 by SCLSNJ Staff
National Poetry Month: Gabrielle Bates   Created by Bob Helmbrecht, collection development librarian Our National Poetry Month poet for today is Gabrielle Bates.  Bates's debut collection, "Judas Goat," was published in 2023 by Tin House Books. From the publisher's description: "Gabrielle Bates's electric debut collection 'Judas Goat' plumbs the depths of intimate relationships. The book's eponymous animal is used to lead sheep to slaughter while its own life is spared, and its harrowing existence echoes through this spellbinding collection of forty poems, which wrestle with betrayal and forced obedience, violence and young womanhood, and the "forbidden felt language" of sexual and sacred love. These poems conjure encounters with figures from scriptures, domesticated animals eyeing the wild, and mothering as a shapeshifting, spectral force; they question what it means to love another person and how to exorcise childhood fears. All the while, the Deep South haunts, and no matter how far away the speaker moves, the South always draws her back home." "Judas Goat" has received a lot of great reviews, including those from “The New York Times Book Review,” “Chicago Review of Books,” “Publishers Weekly,” and “Library Journal.” Poet Tiana Clark said of the collection: "Gabrielle Bates announces herself as a poet of compassion, precision, and heartbreak in all its myriad ways-in ‘Judas Goat,’ the poet studies and upends stories of suffering in both human and animal worlds. Radiating with the curiosity and wonder of a medieval painter, the poet's refreshing voice creates a glistening world of religious, mythic, pagan, and modern images which interrogate the cruelties in our most intimate relationships: lovers, parents, landscapes, and gods." Bates also writes and illustrates poetry comics. You can read an interview about this on the Poetry Foundation website, and links to examples on the author's website. You can also find links to reviews, poems, and more on Bates's publications page. Read some samples, then check out "Judas Goat" today!
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