Description
Adrienne Gruber's third full poetry collection, Q & A, is a poetic memoir detailing a first pregnancy, birth and early postpartum period. The poet is both traumatized and transformed by the birth of her daughter. She is compelled by the dark places birth takes her and as she examines and revisits those places, a grotesque history of the treatment of pregnant and birthing women reveals itself.
Praise for Q & A:
"To give birth, to bear life-to release and capture that experience in words: this is the crystalline achievement of Q & A. Gruber's poetry resonates in the hollows of my body, in the fear and hope that accompanies motherhood." -Marianne Apostolides, author of Deep Salt Water
"In Q&A Adrienne Gruber annotates the condition of the pre- and post-partum body, training her ruthless poetic eye on division: cell by cell, mother from daughter, fact from misguided historical tendency. Is this a love poem / or a poem of grief? / When we make something / we lose, she writes. Throughout these poems and their namesake childhood interrogatives, fluids course, sutures tear, ducts leak. Gruber's ability to command the language of sublime physicality draws motherhood's grotesque fears close, turning them over like an infant on a lap, examining perfections and dangers with intimate scrutiny." -Elee Kraljii Gardiner, author of Trauma Head and serpentine loop
About the Author
ADRIENNE GRUBER is an award-winning writer originally from Saskatoon. She is the author of five chapbooks, three books of poetry, including Q & A, Buoyancy Control, and This is the Nightmare, and the creative nonfiction collection, Monsters, Martyrs, and Marionnettes: Essays on Motherhood. She won the Antigonish Review's 2015 Great Blue Heron poetry contest and SubTerrain's 2017 Lush Triumphant poetry contest, placed third in Event's 2020 creative nonfiction contest, and was the runner up in SubTerrain's 2023 creative nonfiction contest. Both her poetry and nonfiction have been longlisted for the CBC Literary Awards. In 2012, Mimic was awarded the bp Nichol Chapbook Award. Adrienne lives with her partner and their three daughters on Nex wlelex m (Bowen Island), B.C., the traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples.
Reviews
"To give birth, to bear life -- to release and capture that experience in words: this is the crystalline achievement of Q & A. Gruber's poetry resonates in the hollows of my body, in the fear and hope that accompanies motherhood." -- Marianne Apostolides, author of Deep Salt Water
"In Q&A Adrienne Gruber annotates the condition of the pre- and post-partum body, training her ruthless poetic eye on division: cell by cell, mother from daughter, fact from misguided historical tendency. Is this a love poem / or a poem of grief? / When we make something / we lose, she writes. Throughout these poems and their namesake childhood interrogatives, fluids course, sutures tear, ducts leak. Gruber's ability to command the language of sublime physicality draws motherhood's grotesque fears close, turning them over like an infant on a lap, examining perfections and dangers with intimate scrutiny." -- Elee Kraljii Gardiner, author of Trauma Head and serpentine loop
Book Information
ISBN 9781771664721
Author Adrienne Gruber
Format Paperback
Page Count 112
Imprint Book*hug
Publisher Book*hug
Weight(grams) 159g
Dimensions(mm) 221mm * 147mm * 10mm
Praise for Q & A:
"To give birth, to bear life-to release and capture that experience in words: this is the crystalline achievement of Q & A. Gruber's poetry resonates in the hollows of my body, in the fear and hope that accompanies motherhood." -Marianne Apostolides, author of Deep Salt Water
"In Q&A Adrienne Gruber annotates the condition of the pre- and post-partum body, training her ruthless poetic eye on division: cell by cell, mother from daughter, fact from misguided historical tendency. Is this a love poem / or a poem of grief? / When we make something / we lose, she writes. Throughout these poems and their namesake childhood interrogatives, fluids course, sutures tear, ducts leak. Gruber's ability to command the language of sublime physicality draws motherhood's grotesque fears close, turning them over like an infant on a lap, examining perfections and dangers with intimate scrutiny." -Elee Kraljii Gardiner, author of Trauma Head and serpentine loop
About the Author
ADRIENNE GRUBER is an award-winning writer originally from Saskatoon. She is the author of five chapbooks, three books of poetry, including Q & A, Buoyancy Control, and This is the Nightmare, and the creative nonfiction collection, Monsters, Martyrs, and Marionnettes: Essays on Motherhood. She won the Antigonish Review's 2015 Great Blue Heron poetry contest and SubTerrain's 2017 Lush Triumphant poetry contest, placed third in Event's 2020 creative nonfiction contest, and was the runner up in SubTerrain's 2023 creative nonfiction contest. Both her poetry and nonfiction have been longlisted for the CBC Literary Awards. In 2012, Mimic was awarded the bp Nichol Chapbook Award. Adrienne lives with her partner and their three daughters on Nex wlelex m (Bowen Island), B.C., the traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples.
Reviews
"To give birth, to bear life -- to release and capture that experience in words: this is the crystalline achievement of Q & A. Gruber's poetry resonates in the hollows of my body, in the fear and hope that accompanies motherhood." -- Marianne Apostolides, author of Deep Salt Water
"In Q&A Adrienne Gruber annotates the condition of the pre- and post-partum body, training her ruthless poetic eye on division: cell by cell, mother from daughter, fact from misguided historical tendency. Is this a love poem / or a poem of grief? / When we make something / we lose, she writes. Throughout these poems and their namesake childhood interrogatives, fluids course, sutures tear, ducts leak. Gruber's ability to command the language of sublime physicality draws motherhood's grotesque fears close, turning them over like an infant on a lap, examining perfections and dangers with intimate scrutiny." -- Elee Kraljii Gardiner, author of Trauma Head and serpentine loop
Book Information
ISBN 9781771664721
Author Adrienne Gruber
Format Paperback
Page Count 112
Imprint Book*hug
Publisher Book*hug
Weight(grams) 159g
Dimensions(mm) 221mm * 147mm * 10mm
