Author Description

War Bonds is a book of poems about survival in the face of conflict, from Iraq and Afghanistan, to #BlackLivesMatter, the war in Ambazonia and Cameroon, and gang violence in California's Central Valley. The book jumps back in time 100 years to the archive of a Chicago pianist and painter, Edna Cookingham, who worked with the YMCA in France to entertain the troops at the end of WWI. Her letters, telegrams, diary, photographs, and war papers serve as source material for these poems. While Europe may have experienced demobilization and a peace process in 1919, the echoes of that conflict continue to be felt around the world, binding us still. The book explores how we move forward - bound together - after conflict, violence, terror, or mass trauma.