Sprawl Poems

"'Because to name / a thing can be a way to claim it,' Andrew Collard writes in his stunning Sprawl, a poetic geography of the nation's heartland placed in a metropolitan Detroit that the poet presents as Autotopia, in the age of the Anthropocene that Detroit so mightily helped to create. Powerfully and precisely attentive, beautifully crafted to encompass the imaginative breadth of his witness and vision, Collard's poems provide us with indispensable 'field reports from the interior' with deeply articulate, heartfelt fury." "Andrew Collard's Sprawl refuses to shy away from the darkness yet is unafraid to acknowledge the strange beauties which whisper from the depths of fissures and the distances beyond peripheries. Collard captures complexities of contemporary life as the verse maintains its dichotomies, does not water down hardships nor loss. We explore a desperate sort of sadness, such as 'what it means that I am from here // but can't afford a home here.' Yet the work rejects didacticism, instead painting palpable landscapes, places in which we can immerse ourselves for contemplation. These poems zoom into and out from intimate moments, showcasing nuances of public and private topographies. This collection is a superb demonstration of the role of the modern writer as witness to their times." "I admired the poet's deeply felt intelligence alert to 'the way the pieces move.' The manuscript was an experience that gripped me from the beginning."