Broadly Reads CAConrad

For Broadly, Laura Winnick recommends a few new books that are "must-reads outside your basic heterosexual canon." The list includes CAConrad's While Standing in Line for Death (Wave, 2017). Winnick writes that Conrad's latest is "a book of queer ritual." From there: 

Conrad endured a devastating loss in 1998: their boyfriend, Earth, was brutally murdered right outside of their rural, queer community in Tennessee. Though the police called Earth’s death a suicide, Conrad and the coroners knew otherwise; Earth was raped, beaten, and killed. The book is part creative practice, part poetry; Conrad explains their approach to coping with loss through (soma)tic poetry ritual, and follows with the poems that were born from those rituals. They write, “(Soma)tic poetry rituals provide a window into the creative viability of everything around us, initiating an extreme present.” The proposed practices range from the simple act of burning sage and giving gratitude, to the more enchanted: witch dance workouts, regret-reversal spells, sunrise and sunset reiki. Conrad provides healing, hopeful activities for becoming present to your inner spirit and outer trauma, and pages of poetry that attempt to harmonize the two.

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