Bloodaxe Books | Launch reading by Jen Campbell, Courtney Conrad and Nicole Sealey @BloodaxeBooks | Uploaded September 2023 | Updated October 2024, 1 hour ago.
Join Bloodaxe for this launch reading by Jen Campbell, Courtney Conrad and Nicole Sealey celebrating publication of their new collections. Courtney Conrad's pamphlet I Am Evidence is being published by Bloodaxe after winning the Mslexia Women's Poetry Pamphlet Competition.
All three poets will be reading live and discussing their new collections with special guest host, poet John Challis. The whole event will be available afterwards on this YouTube page once it has finished.
In her first set, Courtney Conrad reads 'John 19:28' by Gboyega Odubanjo, in tribute to this poet, who tragically died in late August of this year. Gboyega's friends and family have launched the Gboyega Odubanjo Foundation for low-income Black writers, and a link to donate to the fund in his memory can be found here: gofundme.com/f/gboyega-odubanjo-beloved-son-brother-friend
To order copies of the poets’ books direct from Bloodaxe, please click on these links (available via the Bloodaxe website from early September). If you are in Ireland or elsewhere in the EU, you can pre-order via Books Upstairs in Dublin:
Jen Campbell: Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit
bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/please-do-not-touch-this-exhibit-1328
Ireland & EU: https://booksupstairs.ie/product/please-do-not-touch-this-exhibit/
Courtney Conrad: I Am Evidence
UK: bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/i-am-evidence-1337
Ireland & EU: https://booksupstairs.ie/product/i-am-evidence/
Nicole Sealey: The Ferguson Report: An Erasure
bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/the-ferguson-report-an-erasure-1330
Ireland & EU: https://booksupstairs.ie/product/the-ferguson-report-an-erasure/
Nicole Sealey: Ordinary Beast
bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/ordinary-beast-1329
Ireland & EU: https://booksupstairs.ie/product/ordinary-beast/
***
Jen Campbell: Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit
Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit explores disability, storytelling, and the process of mythologising trauma. Jen Campbell writes of Victorian circus and folklore, deep seas and dark forests, discussing her own relationship with hospitals — both as a disabled person, and as an adult reflecting on childhood while going through IVF.
*
Courtney Conrad: I Am Evidence
Winner of the 2022 Mslexia Women’s Poetry Pamphlet Competition
Courtney Conrad’s powerful work interrogates the tensions within Caribbean migration, gender-based violence and national politics. Migrating from Kingston as a teenager, she is unflinching in her attempts to capture the vibrancy and violence of her experiences in both the UK and Jamaica. Her poetry draws together subversive diasporic imagery, national political commentary and shatteringly personal narrative in its exacting response to the political corruption and violence she witnessed as a young girl in Jamaica in the wake of its colonial subjugation under the British Empire. The themes of her work stretch across state- and gender-based violence, religion, raw bodily introspection and lush cultural memorabilia that reimagines the warmth and blood of both her homes.
*
Nicole Sealey
The Ferguson Report: An Erasure
In August 2014, Michael Brown – a young, unarmed Black man – was shot to death by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. What followed was a period of protests and turmoil, culminating in an extensive report that was filed by the Department of Justice detailing biased policing and court practices in the city. It is a document that exposes the racist policies and procedures that have become commonplace – from disproportionate arrest rates to flagrant violence directed at the Black community. It is a report that remains as disheartening as it is damning
Now, award-winning poet Nicole Sealey revisits the investigation in a book that redacts the report, an act of erasure that reimagines the original text as it strips it away. While the full document is visible in the background – weighing heavily on the language Sealey has preserved – it gives shape and disturbing context to what remains.
The Ferguson Report: An Erasure is published simultaneously by Knopf in the US and Bloodaxe Books in the UK. Nicole Sealey’s first collection, Ordinary Beast (2017), is published in the UK by Bloodaxe at the same time.
Ordinary Beast
The ranging scope of enquiry undertaken in Ordinary Beast – at times philosophical, emotional, and experiential – is evident in each thrilling twist of image by the poet. In brilliant, often ironic lines that move from meditation to matter of fact in a single beat, Sealey’s voice is always awake to the natural world, to the pain and punishment of existence, to the origins and demises of humanity. Exploring notions of race, sexuality, gender, myth, history and embodiment with profound understanding, Sealey’s is a poetry that refuses to turn a blind eye or deny. It is a poetry of daunting knowledge.
Join Bloodaxe for this launch reading by Jen Campbell, Courtney Conrad and Nicole Sealey celebrating publication of their new collections. Courtney Conrad's pamphlet I Am Evidence is being published by Bloodaxe after winning the Mslexia Women's Poetry Pamphlet Competition.
All three poets will be reading live and discussing their new collections with special guest host, poet John Challis. The whole event will be available afterwards on this YouTube page once it has finished.
In her first set, Courtney Conrad reads 'John 19:28' by Gboyega Odubanjo, in tribute to this poet, who tragically died in late August of this year. Gboyega's friends and family have launched the Gboyega Odubanjo Foundation for low-income Black writers, and a link to donate to the fund in his memory can be found here: gofundme.com/f/gboyega-odubanjo-beloved-son-brother-friend
To order copies of the poets’ books direct from Bloodaxe, please click on these links (available via the Bloodaxe website from early September). If you are in Ireland or elsewhere in the EU, you can pre-order via Books Upstairs in Dublin:
Jen Campbell: Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit
bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/please-do-not-touch-this-exhibit-1328
Ireland & EU: https://booksupstairs.ie/product/please-do-not-touch-this-exhibit/
Courtney Conrad: I Am Evidence
UK: bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/i-am-evidence-1337
Ireland & EU: https://booksupstairs.ie/product/i-am-evidence/
Nicole Sealey: The Ferguson Report: An Erasure
bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/the-ferguson-report-an-erasure-1330
Ireland & EU: https://booksupstairs.ie/product/the-ferguson-report-an-erasure/
Nicole Sealey: Ordinary Beast
bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/ordinary-beast-1329
Ireland & EU: https://booksupstairs.ie/product/ordinary-beast/
***
Jen Campbell: Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit
Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit explores disability, storytelling, and the process of mythologising trauma. Jen Campbell writes of Victorian circus and folklore, deep seas and dark forests, discussing her own relationship with hospitals — both as a disabled person, and as an adult reflecting on childhood while going through IVF.
*
Courtney Conrad: I Am Evidence
Winner of the 2022 Mslexia Women’s Poetry Pamphlet Competition
Courtney Conrad’s powerful work interrogates the tensions within Caribbean migration, gender-based violence and national politics. Migrating from Kingston as a teenager, she is unflinching in her attempts to capture the vibrancy and violence of her experiences in both the UK and Jamaica. Her poetry draws together subversive diasporic imagery, national political commentary and shatteringly personal narrative in its exacting response to the political corruption and violence she witnessed as a young girl in Jamaica in the wake of its colonial subjugation under the British Empire. The themes of her work stretch across state- and gender-based violence, religion, raw bodily introspection and lush cultural memorabilia that reimagines the warmth and blood of both her homes.
*
Nicole Sealey
The Ferguson Report: An Erasure
In August 2014, Michael Brown – a young, unarmed Black man – was shot to death by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. What followed was a period of protests and turmoil, culminating in an extensive report that was filed by the Department of Justice detailing biased policing and court practices in the city. It is a document that exposes the racist policies and procedures that have become commonplace – from disproportionate arrest rates to flagrant violence directed at the Black community. It is a report that remains as disheartening as it is damning
Now, award-winning poet Nicole Sealey revisits the investigation in a book that redacts the report, an act of erasure that reimagines the original text as it strips it away. While the full document is visible in the background – weighing heavily on the language Sealey has preserved – it gives shape and disturbing context to what remains.
The Ferguson Report: An Erasure is published simultaneously by Knopf in the US and Bloodaxe Books in the UK. Nicole Sealey’s first collection, Ordinary Beast (2017), is published in the UK by Bloodaxe at the same time.
Ordinary Beast
The ranging scope of enquiry undertaken in Ordinary Beast – at times philosophical, emotional, and experiential – is evident in each thrilling twist of image by the poet. In brilliant, often ironic lines that move from meditation to matter of fact in a single beat, Sealey’s voice is always awake to the natural world, to the pain and punishment of existence, to the origins and demises of humanity. Exploring notions of race, sexuality, gender, myth, history and embodiment with profound understanding, Sealey’s is a poetry that refuses to turn a blind eye or deny. It is a poetry of daunting knowledge.
