Combining eloquent lyrics and edgy anti-lyrics, the poems in Poetry is Blood both rehearse and flout conventions of lyric poetry to speak with deep-rooted melancholy about family and tribal history, ancient walls, paintings, monuments, martyred poets, and genocidal madness. These pieces have the wide cross-stylistic reach of elegy yet fearlessly resist any redemptive rhetoric. They possess the rare ability of being both personal and political at the same time.

Keith Garebian is the author of five previous poetry collections — Frida: Paint Me As a Volcano (Buschek), Blue: The Derek Jarman Poems (Signature), Children of Ararat (Frontenac), and Moon On Wild Grasses (Guernica) — and fourteen books of non-fiction. His writing has earned him numerous awards, including the William Saroyan Medal (Armenia), three Mississauga Arts Awards (Established Literary), Canadian Authors Association (Niagara Branch) Poetry Awards, and numerous grants from the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council.

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Poetry is Blood is a passionate and riveting journey into Armenian genocide memory and trauma, vision, and fact. Garebian's poems bear witness across generations reminding us that poetic imagination makes the past urgent.--Peter Balakian