by Grace Teuila Evelyn Taylor (Author)
Full Broken Bloom is Grace Teuila Evelyn Taylor's second collection of poetry. Full Broken Bloom is altar-building, moon-swallowing, jawbone-slicing, and goddess-making. Bleeding. Forgiving. And re-fleshing dead bones. In her second offering from Ala Press, Grace Teuila Evelyn Taylor swallows worlds of pain and betrayal. Yet from the dust and ashes emerge womyn who stand naked in front of mirrors and spill. Womyn who can taste fear. Womyn who dare readers to fall. Mothers, daughters, lovers, and makers more feverish than myth. ... This collection has hope and vision. No'u Revilla (Hawai'i) This is the landscape of love, te whenua o te aroha, a fraught terrain with every contour, every valley, every lofty height explored, each aspect given thorough inspection, the rough with the smooth, the harsh with the beautiful, ... the distance of ending, the immense promise of beginning. And if all it was, this collection, this body, this BODY of work, was a navigation of such terrain it would be perfectly adequate. But her name is Grace, and she is a woman of far greater depth. Listen to her lilt, her cheek, her rage and her glory, here is a woman, a mother, a lover, a poet, a storyteller, a fighter, ultimately a human, subject and willing to every sense and so able to convey. Ben Brown (Aotearoa)