Description
Book SynopsisYou Might Be Sorry You Read This is a stunning debut, revealing how breaking silences and reconciling identity can refine anger into something both useful and beautiful. A poetic memoir that looks unflinchingly at childhood trauma (both incestuous rape and surviving exposure in extreme cold), it also tells the story of coming to terms with a hidden Indigenous identity when the poet discovered her Métis heritage at age 38. This collection is a journey of pain, belonging, hope, and resilience. The confessional poems are polished yet unpretentious, often edgy but humorous; they explore trauma yet prioritize the poet’s story. Honouring the complexities of Indigenous identity and the raw experiences of womanhood, mental illness, and queer selfhood, these narratives carry weight. They tell us “You need / only be the simple / expression of the divine / intent / that is your life.” There is a lifetime in these poems.
Trade ReviewHonouring the complexities of Indigenous identity and the raw experiences of womanhood, mental illness, and queer selfhood, the poems in Michelle Poirier Brown’s You Might Be Sorry You Read This reveal how breaking silences and reconciling identity can refine anger into something both useful and beautiful. -- 49th Shelf, February 28, 2022
#9 on Edmonton Bestsellers list, September 18, 2022
"This is a book that refuses secrets, that seeks to transform dark and unsettling experiences by confronting them with clarity and fury." Melanie Brannagan Frederiksen, Winnipeg Free Press, July 23, 2022
#10 on Edmonton Bestsellers list, June 5, 2023
"An excellent job of carrying the reader along... [The author's voice] has an off-hand tone to it. It is practical, pragmatic, states its case. There is strength and indignance in it." Jury comments, SCWES Book Awards for BC Authors
Table of Contents1 The Father I Had 3 God Was a Baby 4 A Child’s Book of Holy Services 6 Her Breath on My Face 8 Other Side of the Glass 10 Effect on Her Throat 11 The House on Strathnaver Avenue 15 Mothers Who Know 16 The Thing About Snow 22 Photograph 23 Under the Covers 25 The Girls I Grew Up With Are Everywhere 27 Short Change 28 After the Test 29 Walk on the Left-Hand Side 30 5:53 PM 32 A Perspective on Women 33 Collard Greens 34 Lasts 36 I’m Allowed to Have Whatever Kind of Father I Want 38 Intimacy 39 On the Porch 41 At Times, My Teeth Chatter about face 46 What It’s Like to Have My Face 47 Understanding My Face 52 Wake 54 A Fragile Defiance 55 Smoke 57 Winnipeg Trip 59 Commitment 61 Two Mornings, 2018 63 Boxed 64 Those I Call Friends 66 Duck Ugly 67 Beneficiaries of a Genocide 69 Slow 70 Sometimes You Learn Things Quite Late in the Game 72 Something Purple 75 what it is like to be this extreme and appear normal 78 The Other Grandmother 80 Self-Portrait of the Poet 83 addendum 87 poetic statement 90 acknowledgements"
