Description: "Combining eloquent lyrics and edgy anti-lyrics, the poems in Poetry is Blood both rehearse and flout conventions of lyric poetry to speak with deep-rooted melancholy about family and tribal history, ancient walls, paintings, monuments, martyred poets, and genocidal madness. These pieces have the wide cross-stylistic reach of elegy yet fearlessly resist any redemptive rhetoric. They possess the rare ability of being both personal and political at the same time."--
Brief description:
Keith Garebian is a widely published, award-winning freelance literary, theatre, and dance critic, biographer, and poet. Among his many awards are the Scarborough Arts Council Poetry Award (2010), the Canadian Authors Association (Niagara Branch) Poetry Award (2009), the Mississauga Arts Award (2000, 2008 and 2013), a Dan Sullivan Memorial Poetry Award (2006), the Lakeshore Arts/Scarborough Arts Council Award for Poetry (2003), and an Ontario Poetry Society Award for Haiku (2003). He is the author of 7 collections of poetry.
Review Quotes: "Poetry is Blood is a passionate and riveting journey into Armenian genocide memory and trauma, vision, and fact. Garebian's poems bear witness across generations reminding us that poetic imagination makes the past urgent." -- Peter Balakian