After Pyre

by P.M. Draper

Scheduled Release Date: Sept 15, 2022

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P.M. Draper’s poems in After Pyre explore change, loss, and unfathomable heartache, while offering the reader respite with her skillful verse that is not only refreshing, but achingly funny when you least expect it. From the tragic tale of suicide by fire to poems about squirrel sex and the Kung Fu Nuns of Kathmandu, After Pyre will take the reader on quite a ride.

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In After Pyre, her second collection of poetry, P.M. Draper skillfully and piercingly explores what it means to experience both personal and collective trauma. Written in radiant, unfancy language, her poems speak of family dysfunction and tragedy, the pandemic, illness, and ageing—all with bracing clear-sightedness and compassion, defiance, abundant humor, and above all, an abiding sense of hope. Draper’s poetry asks difficult questions: how does one move through the world while haunted by memories of violent sibling deaths, mental illness, addiction? How does one find beauty and joy amidst enormous suffering and loss? These galvanizing poems implore and inspire the reader to embrace possibility in the face of heartache. They are a stunning testament that, out of chaos and ruin, we humans are endlessly capable of discovering the power to live fully to touch the bones of every dream.

 —Skipwith Coale