Always a Relic Never a Reliquary (Paperback or Softback)

WINNER OF THE 2020 ST. LAWRENCE BOOK AWARD

In her debut full-length poetry collection, ALWAYS A RELIC NEVER A RELIQUARY, Brazilian American poet, editor and abolitionist Kim Sousa interrogates inheritance by reaching both backwards and forwards: backwards towards her father's first border crossing and forwards past her own. Centered around a specific personal trauma, a later-term miscarriage, the poems also contain collective trauma: they ask what it means to live in the United States both as immigrant and citizen, addressing State terror and violence as if by megaphone at the protest line. In Sousa's poems, the personal is political: they are anti-racist, ecocritical and proletariat. She sings diasporic resilience as both a horror and celebration. The poems are haunted but hopeful; here, there is always hope in rage and resistance.

Poetry. Latinx Studies.

Kim Sousa is a Brazilian American poet and open border radical. She was born in Goiânia, Goiás and immigrated to Austin, Texas with her family at age five. Her poems can be found in Poet Lore, EcoTheo Review, The Boiler, and elsewhere. Her first book of poems, ALWAYS A RELIC NEVER A RELIQUARY, is the winner of Black Lawrence Press 2020 St. Lawrence Book Award. Kim is currently editing an anthology of LatinxFuturisms, Até Mais, with Alan Chazaro and Malcolm Friend. You can find Kim at www.kimsousawrites.com and on Twitter @kimsoandso and @LatinxFuturisms.