“These are all love poems—to Alaska, to a dog, to the homeless community and the queer community, to one’s own body. And if they spill over with indignation and rage then it’s only because they are so full of love. Binded is an important book, a beautiful and expansive book, both confrontational and tender. You’ll want to read these poems aloud, shout them, sing them. A marvelous debut.”
—David Nikki Crouse, Director of Creative Writing at University of Washington

“In their debut collection, Binded, H A Warren tackles the infinite constraints of our current context, how individuals and institutions try to remake, rename, and undo us, even before birth. Here, suffering recognizes suffering: ‘she writes a list of her horrors and titles it God / or whatever God names her in the night / black latches like shadow puppets.’ With musicality and visceral imagery, Warren illustrates how a desire to be seen and understood often leaves us vulnerable to being targeted and prescribed. Yet, ‘if I suffocate in this compression,’ the speaker proclaims, ‘call it a life well spent.’ And a life well spent it is—Warren is a poet spurned by empathy and kinship. Here is someone who understands how the body, especially a nonbinary one, is always in process and that we are made through our own ever-unfolding imagining of ourselves: ‘when I tell you I am transitioning / what I mean is / I am always in transition.’ These poems sound the alarm at how our eroding political and economic systems continue to demean and endanger so many of us. We would be wise to listen, ‘our bodies bent / in riot.’”
—Caitlin Scarano, author of The Necessity of Wildfire and Do Not Bring Him Water