Praise for Thea Matthews' GRIME:
"Set in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood, Matthews's poems on grief and survival explore urban living, including addiction and poverty, through traditional and experimental forms."Publishers Weekly "Fall Books Preview"
"Thea Matthews declares that the core of GRIME, her blistering and revelatory take on exactly what makes us human, is 'an experience to face.' That encounter, driven by deftly-craved poems with no wasted movementis by no means an unexacting one. It's restless, impelling and breaking all the right rules. The personas that drive this collection have overwhelmed silencethe voices here bring both stories that both hurt and heal. There is no turning away."Patricia Smith, author of Blood Dazzler
"These poems are alive. Anthems, war cries, hymns, love songspoems that rightly and constantly question and blur the lines between beloved and enemy, history and reality: 'A cricket sings on my knee / by playing a violin made of pennies.' This collection is an homage to the mysterious experience of time and change, place and bewilderment. With GRIME, Matthews has given us all a stellar poetic engagement with the world."Robin Coste Lewis, author of To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness
"Thea Matthews is a masterful poet writing with near unmatched ferocity and precision. Her new collection, GRIME, is as sumptuous as a novel. These are brilliantly observed poems, and piercing monologues of witness. Frank, fearless and full of love, it is easy to fall in line with Matthews' gorgeous and spellbinding work."James Cagney, author of Ghetto Koans: A Personal Archive
"Thea Matthews does something almost no one is doing any moreshe writes dramatic monologues; she inhabits othersmurderers, racist cops, sad victims of the same. And she's great at it. And she inhabits herself as if from the outside, writing dispassionate and harrowing reports from addiction, from the ravages of Reaganomics, from the grimy San Francisco streets. But despite the grim grime, these are the poems of someone who made it, and they're not sensational, they're not salacious; they're lyrical and shapely and grime has never sounded so beautiful."Matthew Rohrer, author of Army of Giants
Praise for Thea Matthews:
"a writer of urgency and authentic concern."Jericho Brown, author of The Tradition
"This is true literary witchcraft."Michelle Tea, author of Valencia
"Thea Matthews's poems excavate and explore family traumas and relationships. Voice and silence deliver deep beauty and urgency. This is a language of flesh, blood, soil, sorrow, and ultimately healing." Maw Shein Win, author of Percussing the Thinking Jar
"These poems are crucial for our times." MK Chavez, author of Dear Animal
"Thea Matthews is a poetic herbalist, using flowers to create healing. This work is egalitarian, touching on blooms of all sorts: indigenous, imported, bolted, and cultivated. You will feel these poems in the root of your jaw, in your foot arches. Matthews is an experienced poet with a deft hand and an honest heart. These words languidly stretch, snap like a lock blade, they drape and twine and reach. Read this work and be changed."Kim Shuck, author of Deer Trails