BRID
“Lauren Shapiro’s Brid is both an intense examination of family life during the pandemic and an extended ars poetica on the role of the artist and the ability of words to accurately represent things that populate the world around us.”
“The word bird a mistaken spelling of the original brid. Mistakes channel a world, a worldview. A tear in a web that becomes an ocular hole. A tunnel into new brightness.”
“Situated during the pandemic’s sanctioned isolation and the resulting forced familial unity, Brid is poetry written by a poet whose faith in language is slipping.”
BRID
BRID by Lauren Shapiro explores motherhood, the dissolution of a marriage, and grief through the lens of a shrinking pandemic space. Through a structure that alternates narrative prose poem passages with lyric poems utilizing space on the page, the form attempts to both compress and expand, mimicking the psychological space of the narrator as she moves through these difficult times. BRID examines how relationships change over time—between children and parents as well as couples, and including the narrator’s own relationship with herself and her body.
PRAISE FOR BRID
“Lauren Shapiro’s Brid is both an intense examination of family life during the pandemic and an extended ars poetica on the role of the artist and the ability of words to accurately represent things that populate the world around us. Even this collection’s title is a meditation on the ways language reflects error, “The word bird a mistaken spelling of the original brid. Mistakes channel a world, a worldview. A tear in a web that becomes an ocular hole. A tunnel into new brightness.” In this collection, Shapiro captures a child’s point of view with stunning clarity while also providing readers with a parent’s perspective on isolation, betrayal, and survival. “Even this poem, a distraction / from disaster, knows its limits,” states “Is Money Made from Trees? my daughter asks.” Brid examines unlikely guideposts such as the changing face of a nearby house seen in different kinds of light, chronicling vulnerabilities yet ultimately residing in a place of newfound wisdom and power.”
—Mary Biddinger, author of Department of Elegy
“‘I think I’ve always been / a gate,’ Shapiro writes in Brid, her beautiful, deeply moving book. Situated during the pandemic’s sanctioned isolation and the resulting forced familial unity, Brid is poetry written by a poet whose faith in language is slipping. The blood of the book is the melancholy of life’s routine, the intense awe of listening to children invent words, and the bifurcated grief of seeing the world in crisis while your own life is caving in.
With photographs of the house next door and her children’s sculptures and drawings—things that could not be closer—we somehow feel estranged. “Writing was a necessary first step,” Shapiro writes, leaving it at that. Teasing us with a cliffhanger. When we’re young language is salvation, but what happens next? “The older I get / the fewer words I need,” she writes. Wow. This is a new power. I love how this book scares and soothes me.”
-Sommer Browning, author of Good Actors
ABOUT
LAUREN SHAPIRO
Lauren Shapiro is the author of BRID (Veliz Books, 2024), Arena (CSU Poetry Center, 2020), listed as a top poetry book of 2020 in The New York Times, and Easy Math (Sarabande, 2013), which was the winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize and the Debut-litzer Prize for Poetry. With Kevin González, she co-edited The New Census: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry (Rescue Press, 2013). She has written two chapbook of poems, House (forthcoming from Finishing Line Press) and Yo-Yo Logic (DIAGRAM/New Michigan Press, 2011). Individual poems have appeared in jubilat, Boston Review, Copper Nickel, Beloit Poetry Journal, Bennington Review, Columbia Poetry Review, New Ohio Review, Sixth Finch, Oversound, Annulet, Poetry Northwest, Diode Mississippi Review, and Drunken Boat, among other places. She has translated creative work from Spanish, Italian, Vietnamese, and Arabic into English, and her translation of Zaira Pacheco’s Despertar en el Sahara (Waking in the Desert) is forthcoming from Eulalia Books. She is an associate professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University.
BOOKS
FORTHCOMING
WRITING
SELECTED POEMS
“Regeneration Pantoum,” The Iowa Review, forthcoming 2024.
“How Many Partial Deaths,” Bennington Review, forthcoming 2024.
“I help my father search for a grave,” Bennington Review, forthcoming 2024.
“Interior,” Spoon River Poetry Review, forthcoming 2024.
“Solstice,” Spoon River Poetry Review, forthcoming 2024.
“A beautiful woman wearing an evening dress wanders into the ocean at 7 a.m.,” Spoon River Poetry Review,
forthcoming 2024.
“Still, Life,” Spoon River Poetry Review, forthcoming 2024.
“Tabula Rasa,” Spoon River Poetry Review, forthcoming 2024.
“When I Learn About the Death,” Oversound, forthcoming 2024.
“Still Life,” Oversound, forthcoming 2024.
“Solstice,” On the Seawall, forthcoming 2024.
“Touch,” Poetry Northwest, 18.2 (2024).
“Essay,” Annulet, 5 (2023): online.
“Genetic Modification,” Sixth Finch, January 2023: Online.
“Immobile,” Sixth Finch, January 2023: Online.
“Brid,” [long poem], Diode, 41.1 (2021): Online.
“I don’t find it exquisite,” jubilat, 39 (2021): 23.
“Getting Older,” Beloit Poetry Journal, 70.1 (2020)
“Temporal,” Beloit Poetry Journal, 70.1 (2020)
“The Memory,” Bennington Review, forthcoming 2020
“That One,” DIAGRAM, 2020
“Cenotaph,” Columbia Poetry Review, 32 (2019): 80.
“Q+A,” Columbia Poetry Review, 32 (2019): 82.
“Spring,” New Ohio Review, 25 (2019): 69.
“The Bodies,” Copper Nickel, 28 (2019): 100.
“Cleanse,” Boston Review, (2018)
“10,000 Dads,” Pittsburgh City Paper, 5 Apr. 2017
“Negative Transfer,” Forklift, Ohio, 34 (2017): 10.
“The Workshop,” Forklift, Ohio, 34 (2017): 63.
“In Context,” Forklift, Ohio, 34 (2017): 158.
“Twinfold,” jubilat, Special Issue (2016): 148.
“Please Mark Any of the Following” jubilat, 25 (2015): 108.
“Am I Crazy?” jubilat, 25 (2015): 106.
“The Kiss,” jubilat, 25 (2015): 107.
“Saturday,” Forklift, Ohio, 30 (2015): 33.
“Patience, Patient,” Forklift, Ohio, 30 (2015): 114.
“Supreme Court Rules Against Women’s Contraceptive Coverage,” Forklift, Ohio, 30 (2015): 50.
“Only Tres Pesos, Señorita,” Forklift, Ohio, 30 (2015): 202.
“I Imagine Your Death,” Propeller, (2015)
“First Snow,” Propeller, (2015)
“Post-Mortem,” Wave Composition, 9 (2015).
“lying on the gurney,” February: An Anthology. February Press (2015): 2.11.
“The Conversation” and commentary, The Poetry Society of America (2013)
“You’re Wearing That?” Mississippi Review, 41.3 (2014): 128.
“Don’t Take It Personally,” Mississippi Review, 41.3 (2014): 130.
“The Polar Bear,” Mississippi Review, 41.3 (2014): 131.
“They Promised Me a Thousand Years of Peace,” VerseDaily, 23 February 2013
“The One Hundreds,” Poetry Daily, 2 March 2013: online.
“Hotel,” jubilat, 21 (2011): 50.
“If You Are Lost, Don’t Move,” jubilat, 21 (2011): 51.
“How I Wrote a Belated Love Letter,” Connotation Press: An Online Artifact (2011)
“First Man Gets the Oyster, Second Man Gets the Shell,” Connotation Press: An Online Artifact (2011)
“A Tediously Slow Realization,” Connotation Press: An Online Artifact (2011)
“The One Hundreds,” Forklift, Ohio, 23 (2011): 63.
“So Much Beauty Turns to Despair in a Hangover,” Forklift, Ohio, 23 (2011): 204.
“Photo Op,” Thermos: 1:5 (2010): 23.
“I’ve Always Wanted to Say This,” Thermos: 1:5 (2010): 24.
“According to the Magazines, Lindsay Lohan is Very Lonely These Days,” Thermos: 1:5 (2010): 25.
“Bent Syllogism,” notnostrums, 3 (2009).
“Botanical Garden,” notnostrums, 3 (2009).
“History Lesson,” notnostrums, 3 (2009).
“Regeneration,” Drunken Boat, 10 (2009)
“Waking Life,” Drunken Boat, 10 (2009)
“ESL Students in Period 1, 8:30-9:50,” Forklift, Ohio, 20 (2009): 85.
“Finale,” Peregrine (2009): 37.
“In the Absence of Metaphor,” Locuspoint (2008)
“A Day in the Life,” Locuspoint (2008)
“Rule Book,” Locuspoint (2008)
“The Confrontation,” Locuspoint (2008)
“The Argument,” Locuspoint (2008)
“Going to Hawaii,” Passages North (2008): 17.
“Learning Curve,” Passages North (2008): 18.
“The First Law of Thermodynamics,” 32 Poems, 6:1 (2008): 16.
“The Conversation,” POOL, 6 (2007): 30.
TRANSLATIONS
“To Be a Reptile,” by Zaira Pacheco, Modern Poetry in Translation, 2023.
“Nocturne,” by Zaira Pacheco, Modern Poetry in Translation, 2023.
“Nude #10,” by Joan Manuel Corcino Font. Poetry Daily, 12 September 2019
“Candor,” by Joan Manuel Corcino Font, jubilat (2019): 15.
“On the Subject of Eyes,” by Joan Manuel Corcino Font, jubilat (2019): 17.
“Nude #10,” by Joan Manuel Corcino Font, jubilat (2019): 19.
“Prologue,” by Joan Manuel Corcino Font, jubilat (2019): 21.
“Downpour,” by Laura Cesarco Eglin, América Invertida: A Bilingual Anthology
of Younger Uruguayan Poets, U. of New Mexico Press (2016): 52-3.
“Agency,” by Laura Cesarco Eglin, América Invertida: A Bilingual Anthology
of Younger Uruguayan Poets, U. of New Mexico Press (2016), pp. 54-5.
“If the Storm Can,” by Laura Cesarco Eglin, América Invertida: A Bilingual Anthology of
Younger Uruguayan Poets, U. of New Mexico Press (2016): 56-7.
“Pasta with Tomato Sauce,” by Laura Cesarco Eglin, América Invertida: A Bilingual Anthology
of Younger Uruguayan Poets, U. of New Mexico Press (2016): 58-9.
“Photogenic,” by Laura Cesarco Eglin, América Invertida: A Bilingual Anthology
of Younger Uruguayan Poets, U. of New Mexico Press (2016): 60-61.
“Photogenic,” “Downpour,” “Agency,” also published in Copper Nickel, 21 (2015): 130-2.
“The Last Bird Burial Master,” by Van Cam Hai, 91st Meridian, 6.1 (2008): 6.