The Nameless has been busy. It has had a couple of glowing reviews from stellar writers, won a book award, and was featured in a recent interview with Sandra Simonds.
In a recent review of the collection, Jim Brock writes, “This unguarded work seems the very product of Muriel Rukeyser’s question: “What would happen if one woman told the truth of her life?” The world that Brandi George has split open contains all the invisible names of death, all the fecund beauty we long for, and a billion seeds that will germinate from the dead.” If you would like to read the full review, check out Brock’s piece in the Florida Review, “All Bird.”
In another review, “There Must Be a God of Mycelium,” Garret Ashley writes, “Rather than evoking images of the demons we’re familiar with through popular media, the narrator is possessed by demons inspired by nature: a mycelium emporex, by dueling bird spirits, by “wings beating / & rush of wind.” Accepting these possessions by the god of non-religion, non-mankind, the non-verbalized, as the speaker does early on, allows her an escape from the oppression of fundamentalist religion.” To read the full review, check out the piece at The Collidescope.
The Nameless also won an Eyeland International Book Award in the Published Poetry Category.
And I was interviewed by the amazing poet, novelist, and critic Sandra Simonds. Here is an exceprt:
Sandra: The Nameless is a book that feels adamant about taking up all of the space it needs, feels like a book that, from the first urgent utterance, immediately moves beyond the confines of “what can be said in language.” Women are often told that their feelings, emotions, ideas are “excessive.” I’d love for you to talk about the relationship between excess, form, and language.
Brandi: Yes, it is 200 pages long, which is pretty excessive for a book of poetry!
Excess is something that our culture is uncomfortable with. We’re always told to be reasonable, logical, to pull it together, to be quiet, kind, giving, pliable, helpful. We’re asked to swallow our emotions so that we don’t make others uncomfortable. This implies that excess is frightening and subversive. In excess there is the potential to break comfortable modes of thinking and feeling. In excess there is a space for new ideas, new forms, new ways of being in the world, and relating to each other. It’s no wonder that we’re discouraged from excesses of emotion and taking up too much space.
I think of this “excess” as the creative impulse itself. It is the power to manifest a work of art, to form a structure, to mutate, to grow, to connect. And emotion drives everything in a work of art. It pushes us beyond the limitations of our paradigms, our habitual modes of thinking and responding to the world. The feeling is what drives the poetry, and the feeling is what manifests as form and structure—syntactical structure, lineation, and even the movement of the images or narrative. Emotion drives it all. I believe emotion is the language of the spirit. It’s through emotion that we connect to ourselves and find a unique voice (or a particular rhythm of consciousness), to other people, to the more-than-human world, and especially to readers. Emotion facilitates all of this. Emotion leads us as individuals, and through individuals, to the larger community. This all starts with excess.
To read the full interview, go to Jacket2!