Mother, Loose

Poetry January 2015 ISBN 978-1-936628-28-5 48 pages Softcover, 5½" x 8½"

Mother, Loose was selected by Patty Paine for the Judge's Choice award in the 2014 Poetry Chapbook competition. "Full of ripe, aching music, Brandel France de Bravo's Mother, Loose captures the overlap between what we chant as comfort and what we choose as elegy. Nursery rhymes become impishly twisted: 'Social climber, / they called me,' Humpty Dumpty admits, while Mary and her lamb pick out 'Teat Peach' polish to get their nails done. Deft and heartbreaking, these poems ask us to step out from under the sheltering wing of Mama Goose, and into the arms of Morpheus. Let this collection cradle your heart in its hand."—Sandra Beasley

family grief

About the Author

Brandel France de Bravo

Brandel France de Bravo is the author of Provenance, which won the 2008 Washington Writers' Publishing House prize in poetry and was a ForeWord Book of the Year finalist. Her poems, which have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and essays have appeared in various journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, Fairy Tale Review, Gulf Coast, and Seneca Review. She is co-author of Trees Make the Best Mobiles: Simple Ways to Raise your Child in a Complex World and the editor of Mexican Poetry Today: 20/20 Voices. A graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College with a master's in public health, she works for a consumer health organization in Washington, D.C.