POETRY

Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity

by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Duke Univ. Oct. 2016. 184p. ISBN 9780822362722. pap. $22.95; ebk. ISBN 9780822373575. POETRY
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Gumbs calls herself a queer black troublemaker and black feminist love evangelist, and she lives up to her own billing in this debut collection. "The ground shakes with us/ the gathering women/ grows rich grows brown grows deep," she says in the opening poem, and throughout she braids the personal and political. "Who spent your childhood up with barefoot errands," she asks, then afterward explains, "you will know me by the curling iron burn inside my thigh." Inspired by literary critic Hortense Spillers, the poems here are informed by a rigorous understanding of gendered violence and racism but take off in their own right.
VERDICT Gumbs's writing has luscious urgency and rhythmic drive, which will make it of interest beyond its titular audience.
Reviewed by Barbara Hoffert , Oct 15, 2016
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