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Tendering the Body by Brittany Brewer

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Brittany Brewer is a poet of the body and the home, spaces not dissimilar, spaces that have been lost and revisited through the speaker’s perpetual yearn for grounding. I’m in awe of the heart, syntax, story, and longing in “Tendering the Body,” the poems giving a rendition of what it means to return home to the Midwest through the lenses of girlhood, friendship, illness, queerness. Listen to Brewer who, even in descendant gestures, holds onto hope: “So many times, I wish I could render my body anew, sift her down to her basest grains, knead her, and let her rise again.” And rise she does in this stunning debut.

–Janine Certo, Author of O Body of Bliss, winner of the 2023 the Longleaf Press Book Contest in Poetry and Elixir, winner of the 2020 New American Poetry Prize and 2020 Lauria/Frasca Poetry Prize, among others.

 

Brittany Brewer’s Tendering the Body provides a teacher’s chronicle of adolescence and personal transformation.  In poems that are as smart as they are tender, Brewer sheds light on the complicated experience of adolescence in the smalltown Midwest and young adult emergence into queer experience.  She invites the reader to witness a journey of a self in process–in a Stake n’ Shake, in a Toyota Camry, in the classroom, the yoga studio, and the doctor’s office.  The book asks us to consider with the author various poetic responses to the critical question “what facts, feelings, needs, or goals, are in your head today” with generosity and care.

–Robin Silbergelid, author of the poetry collection The Baby Book (CavanKerry Press, 2015) and the memoir Texas Girl (Demeter Press, 2014), as well as the chapbooks In the Cubiculum Nocturnum (Dancing Girl Press, 2019) and Frida Kahlo, My Sister (Finishing Line, 2014), among others.

 

 

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Tendering the Body

by Brittany Brewer

Paper

$15.99 List: $17.99

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This title will be released on February 28, 2025

Tendering the Body is a collection of offerings—to queer adolescen[ce/ts], [found] family, and bodies that endure. The poems suture together backyard bonfires and secrets at Steak n’ Shake, ruminations on body hair and therapy and friendship, and bits and pieces of a grieving body newly acquainted with illness. This book is a meditation on the juxtaposition between the visibility of bodies and the invisibility of their affective experiences made material.

Brittany Brewer (she/her) is a queer poet, [theatre] artist, and educator who has lived and grown across eight states. Currently, she lives in Michigan where she is also a doctoral student in Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education at Michigan State University. Her research interests include arts-as-research, embodiment, queer theory, young adult narratives, trauma-informed education, and feedback practices. Before MSU, Brittany worked as the Associate Director of Education at Philadelphia Young Playwrights where, among other things, she facilitated over 315 classroom workshops and created/facilitated professional development workshops for classroom teachers, teaching artists, and classroom actors. She is passionate about cultivating more “Young Adult theatre” and crafting tools for those beginning their theatrical journeys. As a playwright, Brittany’s work has been produced by Revolution Shakespeare, Going Viral Festival, Elephant Room Productions, and Allens Lane Art Center. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Rougarou, Months to Years, Wild Roof Journal, and Hole in the Head Review. She is an alumna of Indiana University, Brown University, and the Arden Professional Apprenticeship program. For more, visit: www.brittanybrewer.com.

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