Sonnets from a Cell by Bradley Peters
CBC Books | Posted: August 16, 2023 3:12 PM | Last Updated: August 16, 2023
Poems for and about the incarcerated
Moving from riots to mall parkades to church, the poems in Bradley Peters' debut Sonnets from a Cell mix inmate speech, prison psychology, skateboard slang and contemporary lyricism in a way that is tough and tender, that is accountable both to Peters' own days "caught between the past and nothing" and to the structures that sentence so many "to lose." Written behind doors our culture too often keeps closed, this is poetry reaching out for moments of longing, wild joy and grace.
Drawing on his own experiences as a teenager and young adult in and out of the Canadian prison system, Peters has written both a personal reckoning and a damning and eloquent account of our violence- and enforcement-obsessed capitalist and patriarchal cultures. (From Brick Books)
Bradley Peters is a poet and actor currently based in Mission, B.C. His poetry has been featured in numerous literary magazines. Sonnets from a Cell is his debut poetry collection.