Nicole Sealey's The Ferguson Report: An Erasure reviewed in The Guardian
American poet Nicole Sealey's first two poetry books were published together in the UK by Bloodaxe on 21 September 2023. Nicole launched them at Bloodaxe's joint online reading and discussion event on 19 September - scroll down to view.
Nicole Sealey's debut collection Ordinary Beast was first published in the US by Ecco in 2017, and was a finalist for the PEN Open Book Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. The first UK edition of Ordinary Beast was published by Bloodaxe in September 2023 at the same time as Nicole Sealey's second book of poetry, The Ferguson Report: An Erasure, an excerpt from which won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in 2021.
Nicole Sealey was born in St Thomas, United States Virgin Islands, and raised in Apopka, Florida. She is a visiting professor at Boston University and teaches in the MFA Writers Workshop in Paris program at New York University. In 2017, she started The Sealey Challenge, an annual online community challenge to read one book of poetry each day for the month of August.
~~~~~
An extract from The Ferguson Report: An Erasure was featured in the Spring 2021 edition of Poetry London, and can be read online here.
~~~~~
REVIEW COVERAGE
Poetry London, Spring 2024 issue (also available online)
Nicole Sealey’s second poetry book The Ferguson Report: An Erasure was well reviewed in the Spring 2024 issue of Poetry London. The review was also made available online on 11 March.
‘Immersive is not an adjective typically used to describe books of poetry, but the collection’s visual power and lyrical rigour secures itself as a one-of-a-kind, declarative work.’ – Eric Yip, Poetry London
https://poetrylondon.co.uk/remembered-reclaimed/
An extract from The Ferguson Report: An Erasure was featured in the Spring 2021 edition of Poetry London, and can be read online here.
REVIEW COVERAGE
Mslexia, Issue 100, Winter 2023, December-February
Ellora Sutton gave Nicole Sealey’s second poetry book The Ferguson Report: An Erasure an excellent review on her What’s New in Poetry page in the Winter 2023 issue of Mslexia magazine.
‘The Ferguson Report: An Erasure is a book-length found poem. There is a boldness to the choice of form that feels powerful, like a refusal to be silenced or constrained. Sealey’s ‘lifted poems’ are in full dialogue with the original text ... Sealey distils the lines into what they really mean on a guttural, human level, making the report accessible. This is poetry as truth, both literal and emotional. This is not a redaction, but a speaking up. A testimony ... The Ferguson Report: An Erasure is a masterclass in found poetry, and a testament to the power of poetry as a visual form. Nicole Sealey is unafraid of taking up space, of wielding the silence of others as a ‘Blunt / force to be reckoned with’. This is essential reading.’ – Ellora Sutton, Mslexia
In print, or online by subscription: https://mslexia.co.uk/shop/mslexia-100/
The Guardian, Poetry Books of the Month, Saturday 2 September 2023, online 30 August 2023
Rishi Dastidar reviewed Nicole Sealey’s second poetry book The Ferguson Report: An Erasure in his best recent poetry round-up for September. The feature ran in print in The Guardian’s Saturday magazine on 2 September, and is also available online.
'Sealey takes the US justice department’s investigation into the titular city’s police department after the 2014 killing of Michael Brown by one of its officers, then erases most of its words to reveal the underlying violence. Individual letters are picked out to form fragments, ratcheting up the tension as the eye moves down the page ... From the strangulated legalese emerges a bleak, shocking beauty.' – Rishi Dastidar, The Guardian (Poetry Books of the Month), on The Ferguson Report: An Erasure
The full review can be read in The Guardian here.
Poetry Book Society Autumn Bulletin 2023
An excellent brief review of Nicole Sealey’s second poetry book The Ferguson Report: An Erasure featured in the PBS Autumn Bulletin 2023.
'Across eight poems Sealey examines the habitual imposition of state violence, the struggle to retain one's humanity when it is officially denied. This is a meticulous, strikingly beautiful erasure that feels ... like it has been painfully, painstakingly extracted, that the journey of the word to the page cost dearly. The Ferguson Report wrestles with the question of what can be said, when anything you say can and will be used against you.' – Dave Coates, Poetry Book Society Autumn Bulletin 2023
ONLINE REVIEW COVERAGE
The High Window, online 22 February 2024
Both of Nicole Sealey’s poetry books were well reviewed in detail online in The High Window of 22 February.
‘Nicole Sealey’s The Ferguson Report: an erasure is a very powerful document, which plays in fascinating and evocative ways with that very loaded word, ‘erasure’ … Its painstakingly deft working of poetry from such dark material demonstrates how we might actually live with such texts amid the world they represent.’ – Ian Pople, The High Window
https://thehighwindowpress.com/category/reviews/
POEM OF THE WEEK IN THE GUARDIAN
The Guardian, Poem of the Week, online Monday 30 October 2023
Nicole Sealey’s poem ‘candelabra with heads’ from her debut poetry collection Ordinary Beast was discussed by Carol Rumens in her online Poem of the Week feature in The Guardian. The piece was illustrated with a photo of the artwork which inspired this powerful poem.
Read the feature via The Guardian website here.
~~~~~
The Ferguson Report: An Erasure
In August 2014, Michael Brown – a young, unarmed Black man – was shot to death by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. What followed was a period of protests and turmoil, culminating in an extensive report that was filed by the Department of Justice detailing biased policing and court practices in the city. It is a document that exposes the racist policies and procedures that have become commonplace – from disproportionate arrest rates to flagrant violence directed at the Black community. It is a report that remains as disheartening as it is damning
Now, award-winning poet Nicole Sealey revisits the investigation in a book that redacts the report, an act of erasure that reimagines the original text as it strips it away. While the full document is visible in the background – weighing heavily on the language Sealey has preserved – it gives shape and disturbing context to what remains.
Nicole Sealey won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in 2021 with an excerpt from The Ferguson Report: An Erasure, earning the judges’ praise for creating ‘new moments of lyrical beauty and contemplation’ out of ‘stifling obfuscations’ to shine ‘a light on all that the report tries to hide’, with Shivanee Ramlochan calling it ‘a poem of resonant cultural and social value’.
The Ferguson Report: An Erasure is published by Knopf in the US and Bloodaxe in the UK. Nicole Sealey’s debut, Ordinary Beast (Ecco, 2017), is published in the UK by Bloodaxe at the same time.
Ordinary Beast
The ranging scope of enquiry undertaken in Ordinary Beast – at times philosophical, emotional, and experiential – is evident in each thrilling twist of image by the poet. In brilliant, often ironic lines that move from meditation to matter of fact in a single beat, Sealey’s voice is always awake to the natural world, to the pain and punishment of existence, to the origins and demises of humanity. Exploring notions of race, sexuality, gender, myth, history and embodiment with profound understanding, Sealey’s is a poetry that refuses to turn a blind eye or deny. It is a poetry of daunting knowledge.
Nicole Sealey reads ‘even the gods’ from Ordinary Beast
Nicole Sealey reads her poem ‘even the gods’ from Ordinary Beast. Part of the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation's Read By series of poetry films. Directed by Jean Coleman and produced in collaboration with 92nd Street Y's Unterberg Poetry Center.
Live-streamed launch reading by Jen Campbell, Courtney Conrad and Nicole Sealey, 19 September 2023
Jen Campbell, Courtney Conrad and Nicole Sealey launched their new poetry collections at Bloodaxe's live-streamed launch event on Tuesday 19 September 2023. All three poets read live and discussed their new collections with each other and with the host, fellow Bloodaxe poet John Challis. Courtney Conrad's pamphlet I Am Evidence is published as the winner of the 2022 Mslexia Women's Poetry Pamphlet Competition, judged by Imtiaz Dharker.
Now available to watch on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMOWG0Q2foA
[06 September 2023]
