I Was Your Bird by Hanley, Brett

Brett Hanley

I Was Your Bird

Regular price $26.00
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I Was Your Bird explores love, memory, identity, and transformation with a voice that is sharp, intimate, and often hauntingly surreal. Grappling with disconnection, environmental...

I Was Your Bird explores love, memory, identity, and transformation with a voice that is sharp, intimate, and often hauntingly surreal. Grappling with disconnection, environmental destruction, substance misuse, trauma, and the dissolution of a relationship, these poems move through dive bars, prehistoric landscapes, and dreamlike interiors shaped by queer poetics and magical realism. This collection leans into the strange to confront both personal and planetary collapse.

From imagined letter-poems to a contemporary Emily Dickson to meditations on mortality and resilience, I Was Your Bird refuses easy answers. Without viable models from the dominant culture to solve problems of self, the speaker forges their own path in search of meaning, connection, and the possibility of redemption.

Brett Hanley holds an MFA from McNeese State University and a PhD from Florida State University. Brett's debut poetry collection, I Was Your Bird, is forthcoming from JackLeg Press in 2026. She has worked as Poetry Editor at both Southeast Review and The McNeese Review. Their poems are forthcoming or have recently been published in West Branch, Gulf Coast, Ninth Letter, The Journal, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. She was a semi-finalist for the 2022 92Y Discovery Contest and was a 2021 Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Foundation Scholar. Brett currently teaches English at Mississippi State University.

Genre
Poetry
Pages
100
Publisher
Jackleg Press
Publication Date
Content
ISBN
9781956907995

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