Harvest by Britt Allen

The poems in Harvest are harrowing, yet lyrical and scathingly honest. Most importantly, they are deeply, deeply moving. While giving witness to the terrible reality of sexual abuse, Allen both transforms and transcends personal experience, turning it into collective recognition. This is a poet who knows how to shape a poem through voice, rhythm, and metaphor. These are skillful, accomplished poems from a poet to be watched.

–Sue William Silverman, author of If the Girl Never Learns

Visceral, precise, the poems in Harvest illuminate childhood sexual abuse while detailing dangerous coping mechanisms such as alcoholism and sexual addiction. But with persistence and courage, Britt Allen fashions trauma into stunning, imagistic poetry that ultimately celebrates the fierce, loving bond among siblings: “For us, only love, only streams/Of bright summer fish, midnights laced/With gold ribbon.” 

–Shanan Ballam, author of Inside the Animal: The Collected Red Riding Hood Poems

Brittney Allen’s Harvest digs into the soil of memory to uncover the sprawling, toxic roots of childhood sexual abuse.  These poems keenly observe and ponder the poison, how it spreads through time, through family, and, despite itself, into moments of grace. Besides the pleasure of being led assuredly over dangerous ground, part of the pleasure of reading these poems lies in their attentiveness to sound and image. Whether they shout or whisper, we hear echoes of life’s beauties and terrors; we see “fish sealed up so long they sputter out, dead upon release.” Here is a poet unafraid to till her past and conjure from its loam a torch that guides us, unfaltering, through the darkest pastures. Allen’s fearlessness is equaled by her artistic vigor, and the result is a stunning collection.

–Ben Gunsberg, author of Welcome, Dangerous Life

Review: https://lineriderpress.com/poetry-book-review-harvest-by-brittney-allen/