Description

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Poetry. Native American Studies. A superb collection of poems rooted in remembering the past, and transcending the confinement imposed by poverty. As Robert Kelly writes in the introduction: Reading Celia Bland's poetry, especially the acute lyrics in this book, I have the feeling of being taken by the hand of a sensitive quiet guide and shown time after time quick narratives, microtomes of life, that speak their own word. Word of a town, maybe, of a family, or a race, or perhaps even, after reading, the sense of a nation-word that has been spoken.

Never in the midst of this world of disorder is the poems' music given short shrift. Each piece is infused with it...That attention to beauty in the language spills over into the world it's describing, so that this world of despair still shimmers. The reader lingers in the state of decay and somehow finds it achingly beautiful, like the moldy old house the speaker inherits along with these memories.--Gretchen Primack, Boston Review

Adroit syntax, crisp imagery, and disasters both personal and public define the poems in Celia Bland's collection CHEROKEE ROAD KILL. Her poems have the air of history about them, whether family history, the haunted past of the Cherokees, or the present slipping away, moment by moment.--Garin Cycholl, Rain Taxi

CHEROKEE ROAD KILL is an important book, written by a poet in total command of her powers.--Jonathan Blunk, Georgia Review

About the Author

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Celia Bland's third collection of poetry, "Cherokee Road Kill," features pen and ink drawings by Kyoko Miyabe. The title poem received the 2015 Raynes Prize. Selected prints of the Madonna Comix, an image and poetry collaboration created with artist Dianne Kornberg, were exhibited at New York City’s Lesley Heller Gallery, and was published by William James Books with an introduction by Luc Sante. She is co-editor with Martha Collins of "Jane Cooper: A Radiance of Attention" (U. of Michigan) and author of young adult biographies of the Native American leaders Pontiac, Osceola, and Peter MacDonald (Chelsea House Books). Originally from the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, Bland teaches poetry at Bard College.