Double Portrait (Barnard Women Poets Prize)

“Musical, insightful, and all the way human.”―Claudia Rankine, 2016 Barnard Women Poets Prize citation

Each poem in Brittany Perham’s prize-winning collection links two portraits: lover and beloved, child and parent, citizen and country, spirit and body, living and dead. Each speaker investigates what it means to be in relationship to another: what does it mean to see and be seen, to reflect and be reflected, to address and be addressed? With musicality, grit, and humor, these poems challenge our conceptions of identity and language. By questioning the ways we think and speak, the ways we rehash and reshape our experience, they formalize obsession. Emotionally stirring and unapologetic, Double Portrait contemplates the nature of devotion.