Ordinary Cruelty - Paperback

by Amber Flame (Author)

In her debut poetry collection, Ordinary Cruelty, Amber Flame spells out rituals in everyday decisions to hold on or let go.

While questioning the role of elder, mentor, mother in the face of losing those figures, Flame details the unrelenting nature of parenthood through the cycles of grief.

Her poems exuberantly rejoice in the brown skin of the female body, while soberly acknowledging the societal dangers of claiming such skin as home.

Flame takes the reader through a visceral examination of the body's processes of both dying and continuing to live and the joy to be found while we do.

Author Biography

Amber Flame is an interdisciplinary creative, activist and educator whose work has garnered residencies with Hedgebrook, Vermont Studio Center, and more. A former church kid from the Southwest, Flame's work is published widely and explores spirituality and sexuality, cross-woven with themes of grief and loss, motherhood and magic, and interstitial joy. A 2016 and 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee and Jack Straw Writer Program alum, Amber Flame's first full-length poetry collection, Ordinary Cruelty , was published in 2017 through Write Bloody Press.