Nightnursing is in part about how some things that are said to save our lives also produce new exposure to death. The book is divided into two parts: (Ante)Recovery and (Anti)Recovery. “Ferventory of Letters” is from the first part, the presumed before, and it both thematizes and formalizes a relentless pursuit of historical, political, and familial knowledge that keeps difficult feelings at bay. It is a glosa, which is poetic form from medieval Spain that appropriates or glosses lines from another poem. Here, I reuse the last four lines from Jamaican poet Roger Mais’s poem, “All Men Come to the Hills,” which also serves as the epigraph—the cabeza or head.
Tiana Reid reads from Nightnursing
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Tiana Reid’s writing has been published in Aperture, Bookforum, Dissent, Frieze, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, Poets.org, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. She is Assistant Professor of English at York University, where she teaches black literature. She received her PhD in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. She also co-edits the magazine Pinko. Nightnursing is her debut book of poetry.
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Nightnursing is available here on All Lit Up, or from your favourite indie bookstore.
