We’d like to invite you to join Malvern’s Line/Break Poetry Book Club! Hosted by Malvernian Julie Poole, this is a reading group for those of you interested in exploring works from our expansive poetry section.

This month’s selection is Ghost Of by Diana Khoi Nguyen.

Ghost Of elegizes a brother lost via suicide, is a mourning song for the idea of family, a family haunted by ghosts of war, trauma, and history. Nguyen’s debut is not an exorcism or un-haunting of that which haunts, but attuned attention, unidirectional reaching across time, space, and distance to reach loved ones, ancestors, and strangers. By working with, in, and around the photographs that her brother left behind (from which he cut himself out before his death), Nguyen wrestles with what remains: remnants of memory, physical voids, and her family captured around an empty space. Through lyric meditation, Nguyen seeks to bridge the realms of the living with the dead, the past with the present. These poems are checkpoints at the border of a mind, with arms outstretched in bold tenderness.

How it works:

Stop by Malvern Books to sign up and you’ll receive a 10% discount off the title! Read the book and then come to the meeting prepared with either a question or a specific poem to discuss with the group. We’ll look forward to seeing you at this meeting of our Line/Break Poetry Book Club!