Blood Root

Reviews / Votes

Jessica Hiemstra offers up "a confession which makes you holy," taking things apart - her Dutch Reformed upbringing v. the fact of having a body "drunk with wonder" - a reckoning, balancing gentleness with mercy, seeking to claim that rarest of things, communion with the living and the dead. Nothing compares or even comes close to articulating the hallowed human stain that remains. A breathtaking achievement. -- Kirby, author of <i>She</i> and <i>Poetry Is Queer</i> Hiemstra's writing is raw and unflinching as she wrestles with the echoes of colonialism and humanity's bruising impact on the natural world . . . -- Catherine Walker * <i>The Miramichi Reader</i> * The work of this poem is not only to untangle [these stolen stories] but to unsettle the expectations of comfort in the pursuit of justice. -- melanie brannagan frederiksen * <i>The Winnipeg Free Press</i> * Compassionate and lyrical, Hiemstra's poems envision a world where "prayer's the bright darting / of a red-winged blackbird." They issue us all a caution: learn from past mistakes because "what we don't return to the earth / our children inherit." Grounded in natural and animal imagery, Blood Root grapples with Hiemstra's familial colonial history. Through acknowledging the violence enacted by her Dutch Christian ancestors and her missionary childhood, Hiemstra attempts to reconcile this past with the interconnectedness of peoples and the natural world. -- Paola Ferrante, author of <i>What to Wear When Surviving a Lion Attack</i> A seething little masterpiece. In three long poems flooded with rage and remorse, Hiemstra reckons with a life that spans three continents and a childhood haunted by beautiful woods and killing hands, "a universe housed in every dead body." Blood Root is a confession, an interrogation, and ultimately an elegy for all the broken birds and drowned kittens of Hiemstra's earliest years. I love how raw and honest and spare these poems are, how at the heart of this astonishingly forgiving book is a relentless, unshakable compassion for all living things. -- Shannon Bramer, author of <i>Precious Energy</i> Through the intertwining of memory and loss, Blood Root compels readers to confront the complex truths of our own sense of belonging, leaving us not with answers, but with the vital reminder that we are all irrevocably shaped by the past we carry within us. -- Ashley Fish-Robertson * <i>Room</i> * The poems in Blood Root are always lyrical, and they are always raw. Hiemstra is drawn to hard edges. Just when you think you can breathe, she pushes you over the precipice. -- Donalee Moulton * <i>Atlantic Books Today</i> *