Brionne Janae

Sep 6, 2024 | haymarketbooks.org | E. A. Hughes |Maya Marshall |Brionne Janae |Alexa Patrick

"Sorting through the wreckage of personal and collective history, Ankle-Deep In Pacific Water neutralizes what might otherwise haunt and destroy. Hughes does the work of all great poets: holds the truths of love and pain, letting both live in the light."—Kemi Alabi, author of Against Heaven "Hughes looks with clear-eyes at human frailty and failure, asks questions that lead readers to ponder their own archives of memory.

Jul 4, 2023 | poetryfoundation.org | Brionne Janae |Rebecca Frank

By Brionne Janae “We’ve Come This Far by Faith,” in Brionne Janae’s Because You Were Mine, opens: “bullheaded beautiful and black / you be a galaxy […]. ” The addressee is both empowered, and tasked, to save themselves: But the poem, coming late in an unflinching collection that tracks brutal racialized and gendered violence, including rape by a grandfather and by a partner, does not end there.