Description

Deep VellumPublishing,paperback

Publication Date:November 9, 2021

Publisher Marketing:A book of testimonies in verse,Winter Phoenixis a collection of poems written loosely after the form of an international war crimes tribunal. The poet, a daughter of a Vietnamese refugee, navigates the epigenetics of trauma passed down, and across, the archives of war, dislocation, and witness, as she repeatedly asks, “Why did you just stand there and say nothing?” Here, the space of accusation becomes both lyric and machine, an “investigation” which takes place in the margins of martial law, the source material being soldiers’ testimonies given during three internationally publicized events, in this order–The Incident on Hill 192 (1966, Ph M District, Vietnam); The Winter Soldier Investigation (1971, Detroit, USA); and The Russell Tribunal (1966, Stockholm, Sweden; 1967, Roskilde, Denmark). Ultimately, however,Winter Phoenixis a document of resilience. Language decays. A ceremony eclipses its trial, and the radical possibilities of a single scream rises from annihilation.