DISSENT coming soon for purchase!
Praise for DISSENT
Kathleen Nalley and Gabrielle Freeman sprang into sonnet-action while so many of us went fetal, unsure how to respond. This ultra-energetic, activist verse picks up where Shakespeare's poetry left off, examining those in power and the rest of us left ‘subject to Time's love or to Time's hate.’ Tradwives, abused women, sex-trafficking, school shootings, Diddy, surveillance cameras, and wildfires are just a few of the ‘real time’ examples of what these sonnets hold as our nation tries to endure. Nalley and Freeman use their fierce intelligence and intuition along with history and myth (and Macbeth!) to make sense--and sound--of our dire political moment. DISSENT is the book we have been waiting for!
—Denise Duhamel, author of Pink Lady: Poems
DISSENT is steeped in the rawness of lived experience, visceral and human, stinking and shining, a beating heart in its pages. A feast for the mind’s eye, these poems shape women’s screams into words and images, rife with familiarity. I delighted in the exploration of gender, I let myself be heard and seen in these grievances, I shared the pain, the grief, the near hopelessness of the situation we face today on one page and let myself be picked back up by the next. DISSENT moved past critique, embodying the true meaning of feminism, the part where we do something about it all.
—Cam Saverino, a Gender Studies scholar who would like to continue work in their chosen field rather than slowly watching it erased and censored
DISSENT perfectly embodies the feminine revolution through all time and all space. By uncovering the rotted roots of systemic patriarchy, we reveal the true intention of man to be infectious. The elixir--Wisdom of all Women Forever. Go ahead--fondle our trigger, render us toothless. We will revolve, restlessly, like the Moon, like love. These poems align us with Her purpose--to mend the Earth, the spirit, the mind, the body, each other. We sleep with one eye open as the wheel turns anew.
—Sophia Pivero, 23 year-old woman pissed that consumerism has destroyed the planet and no one seems to give a shit
Gabrielle Brant Freeman’s award winning and Pushcart nominated poetry has been published in many journals, including Barrelhouse, The Rumpus, One, Scoundrel Time, and storySouth. Press 53 published her book, When She Was Bad. In 2021, Gabrielle’s poetry was included in the collaborative creation of the choreopoem, A Chorus Within Her, performed at Theater Alliance in Washington, DC. She lives in Eastern North Carolina with her family.
Kathleen Nalley is the author of the prose poetry collection, Gutterflower (winner of the Bryant-Lisembee Editor’s Prize), as well as the poetry chapbooks Nesting Doll (winner of the S.C. Poetry Initiative Prize) and American Sycamore. Her poetry and book reviews have appeared in New Flash Fiction Review, Slipstream, Limp Wrist, Southern Humanities Review, The Bitter Southerner, StorySouth, and elsewhere, and her poetry has been anthologized in several collections. She received her MFA from Converse and teaches literature and writing at Clemson University.