The latest from Vivek Shraya’s VS. Books: a poetic exploration of Black identity, history, and lived experience influenced by the constant search for liberation.

In this incendiary debut collection, activist and poet Cicely Belle Blain intimately revisits familiar spaces in geography, in the arts, and in personal history to expose the legacy of colonization and its impact on Black bodies. They use poetry to illuminate their activist work: exposing racism, especially anti-Blackness, and helping people see the connections between history and systemic oppression that show up in every human interaction, space, and community. Their poems demonstrate how the world is both beautiful and cruel, a truth that inspires overwhelming anger and awe – all of which spills out onto the page to tell the story of a challenging, complex, nuanced, and joyful life.

In Burning Sugar, verse and epistolary, racism and resilience, pain and precarity are flawlessly sewn together by the mighty hands of a Black, queer femme.

This book is the second title to be published under the VS. Books imprint, a series curated and edited by writer-musician Vivek Shraya, featuring work by new and emerging Indigenous or Black writers, or writers of colour.

Paperback: 112 pages
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
Date Published: Aug. 6, 2020
Subjects: Poetry / LGBTQ+

About the Author: Cicely Belle Blain is a Black/mixed, queer femme activist, equity and inclusion consultant, and writer. Their bestselling poetry collection Burning Sugar was called “an intimately powerful debut” by Quill and Quire. With laughter and fearlessness, they harness a passion for justice, liberation and meaningful change via transformative education. Listed as one of 29 Powerhouses by Refinery29 and Vancouver Magazine’s Power 50, Cicely Belle is also an instructor in executive leadership at Simon Fraser University, editorial director of Ripple of Change Magazine, and co-founder of Black Lives Matter Vancouver. They live on the lands of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh people.