D-Sorientation - by Charleen McClure

Book Synopsis

Winner of the Blessing the Boats Selection

Foreword by Aracelis Girmay

Charleen McClure's d-sorientation wanders the landscape of loss with a weathered eye and a clenched fist. Delving deep into personal hauntologies, McClure's speakers are dislocated-their observations and interrogations are quietly desperate as they navigate history, relationships, and dig for their roots. The lexicon of McClure's poetry is one of intimacy and outrage, one that challenges the reader to consider their own belonging.

Through bold lyric poems that beat with brutality yet glow with softness, McClure's debut collection is a compass, pointing the reader towards reclamation.

Review Quotes

"If you have ever been lost in a city, which is to say alive in a body, you know exactly how bewildering life can feel. Charleen McClure's debut collection, d-sorientation, elicits an analogous sensation as unsettling as it is compelling. To quote the last line of McClure's penultimate poem, 'I hear a storm.' Dear readers, take cover." - Nicole Sealey, author of The Ferguson Report: An Erasure

"Charleen McClure's debut collection is radiant and searing. d-sorientation is an offering of ferocious beauty and relentless clarity. On these pages are tangible tendernesses woven through raging storms; writing miraculously from the eye, from the center of a howl is McClure, ancient-voiced, rooted, steady." -- Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie, author of Strut

About the Author

Charleen McClure writes and lives a few miles off the Chattahoochee River. A Fulbright scholar, she was a 2020 recipient of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award. Her writing has been supported by VONA, Cave Canem, Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, the Watering Hole, Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon, New York University, and the Conversation Lit Festival.

McClure's work has been published or is forthcoming in The Poetry Project, The Offing, Academy of American Poetry's Poem-a-Day, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. McClure made her film debut in All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (A24, 2023), written and directed by Raven Jackson. Her first poetry collection is a Blessing of the Boats Selection from BOA Editions, Ltd. and is forthcoming in September 2024.