Collateral

Simone John's first chapbook Collateral centers on the police stop of Sandra Bland that led to her death while in police custody on July 13, 2015. With documentary poetic techniques that reframe the transcript of Bland's stop alongside poems of personal experience, John critiques the speech acts and status quos of race and gender supremacy in America. Collateral responds to systemic terror, and finds power in the voice, in grief, in attention, in keeping Sandra Bland and other victims of police violence in the room, in continuing to say their names. - Publisher.