split ends

The residue of trauma is ever present in Alanna McArdle's stunningly-achieved debut poetry collection split ends. These are 12 confrontational poems that swell and contort perspective, conversing with and following one another. McArdle's words are emotional, arresting, and obtrusive. She writes, "crepuscular, fetid, she sniffs like a fox / screams like a fox" and as the ripples retreat, she leaves readers to decide which way they view the conversation. "Alanna McArdle's poetics carves for itself a place between insouciant wit and the stingingly vulnerable. It claims agency and reclaims symbolic space over the terrible, the oppressive, by biting down hard on the articulate nerve of the thing. I'm excited by this pamphlet, and so so glad it exists."

- Wayne Holloway-Smith