Taneum Bambrick’s poems and essays appear or are forthcoming in The Nation, The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, PEN, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Reservoir, was selected by Ocean Vuong for the 2017 Yemassee Chapbook Prize. Intimacies, Received (Vantage) is her second collection and was chosen for the 2019 American Poetry Review/Honickman first book award. In Intimacies, Received, violence hides in the glint of the carving knife – every intimacy a shadow, every memory a maze to navigate. Set primarily in rural Southern Spain, the poems move through streets, fields, households, and years, following a survivor of sexual assault as she painstakingly reassembles a narrative of self. A brilliant storyteller, Bambrick builds through palimpsest – layering vivid imagery to recall embodiment and dissociation, illness and isolation, and queer female sexuality amidst acts of misogyny. Ultimately, the collection signals agency, as trauma is held to the light and finally named.
