A Gospel of Bones
Poems
by Suzi Q. Smith
PAPERBACK $17.99
EBOOK $7.99
HARDCOVER $29.99
PDF (PAY-WHAT-YOU-CAN)
Suzi Q. Smith’s debut collection, A Gospel of Bones, is an exploration of internal dialogue and a survival guide as the poet examines and contends with the politics of biracial black womanhood, love, sex, single motherhood, family, violence, poverty, and most of all, prayer.
A Gospel of Bones includes poems that crisply and lyrically examine the poet’s own gospels. Smith’s writing is breathtaking and devastating at times, welcoming and affirming in others. In “We Pay Cash for Houses,” Smith uses contrapuntal to illustrate the grief and displacement caused by gentrification. In “This Crown Crooked Anyway,” a crown of American sonnets, Smith offers a narrative on faith, violence, love, divorce, grief, and policing, with the racial dynamics threaded throughout. The poems are an offering of unflinching and fierce determination to tell the good stories, the hidden stories, the hard stories, and all that endures after the telling.
Content Warning: racial injustices, violence
Winner of the 2020 Electric Book Award
Praise
“A Gospel of Bones is a smile with a razor hidden beneath its tongue. A raised fist protecting the flower cradled inside of it. Gospel is how survival transfigures into testament. How cultural memory never forgotten is remembered. Gospel is what happens when one turns themselves inside out and dares another to look in: blood, beauty, and Blackness slow-dancing before their eyes.”
—Bobby LeFebre,
Poet Laureate of Colorado
You Might Also Like:
• Poems | Biracial | BIPOC | Motherhood
• 5” x 8” Perfectbound Trade Paperback
• Cream Paper, 106 Pages
• Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-946580-27-6
• Paperback ISBN-10: 1946580279
• Hardcover ISBN-13: Coming Soon
• Hardcover ISBN-10: Coming Soon
• Ebook ISBN-13: Coming Soon
• Ebook ISBN-10: Coming Soon
• LCCN: Not Registered
• First Edition: February 9, 2021
• Short URL: acpbook.link/gospel
• Permalink
• Read Excerpt Sample
• Download Press Release
• Book Club Reading & Discussion Guide
• Request Review Copy
• Get DRC on Edelweiss+
Cover design by Leah Angstman.
About the Author
SUZI Q. SMITH is an award-winning artist, activist, and educator who lives in Denver, Colorado. Her poems have appeared in Union Station Magazine, Suspect Press, La Palabra, Muzzle Magazine, Malpais Review, The Pedestal, The Los Angeles Journal, Denver Syntax, Word Is Bond, The Peralta Press, Yellow Chair Review, and in the anthologies The Mutiny Info Reader, Diverse-City, His Rib: Anthology of Women, and In Our Own Words. Her chapbook collection of poems, Thirteen Descansos, was published by Penmanship Books in 2015. Currently, Suzi Q. is at work on her next collection while she continues to teach Creative Writing and cultivate a beautiful life.
Media & Images
Distribution & Sales
Booksellers can order this book through their Ingram ordering catalogs for 50% discount with free returns or through Asterism Books for 50% discount with no returns (we will accept free returns of Asterism purchases back to us directly; please email altcurrentpress @ gmail . com if you need this return service option).
Booksellers ordering direct from us can get a 50% discount, no shipping costs, free returns accepted. Enter quantity here. If you prefer to be invoiced or need to use a purchase order number, please email altcurrentpress @ gmail . com.
Booksellers who’d like shelf talkers, point-of-sale signage, bookmarks, or author signing/reading posters, you can download the book’s sales kit here.
Contributing authors ordering direct from us can enter quantity here. If you prefer to be invoiced, please email altcurrentpress @ gmail . com.
For reviewers, promotional outlets, or desk copies, please request a copy. Booksellers and book industry professionals can read or download a DRC at Edelweiss+.