This was an excellent poetry collection. There's a lot of depth and emotion captured in these pages, and the poems truly move you. All poetry lovers should pick up this book.

I enjoyed this.

"Through poems on loss, music, college, and family strife, Harris examines how time shifts and changes, despite so much of a life’s architecture staying the same. Ultimately, Patricide opens itself up to reveal a story of many threads, one that finds a way to tie together in unexpected and joyful ways."

The poems were good and thought provoking and coul dbe easily understood by kids.

*I received an ARC of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

Harris’ debut is a chilling, complex glimpse into black masculinity of African Americans, tackling both its fragility and its strengths, and the construction and deconstruction of its roles. The narrator is angry, but the violence is an active verb, a continuous present action: thinking and pondering and searching; a genuine voice that makes the pain tangible. The narrator is angry, yes, but he’s honest first and foremost. “Patricide” is about black boys chasing after the ghosts of their absent fathers, and about the legacies of slavery and racism and institutional violence. This is a deeply personal book, so much so that I kept thinking I was reading a memoir in verse, getting to peruse private missives between a writer and his journal.

I felt a lot reading this book, and found myself in a constant state of unsettling worry. Many of the poems made me nauseous, the visceral reaction leaving something sour and vile behind. But whenever present, the sickly aftertaste —the raw pain—felt intentional and carefully constructed. Fair, I thought, because feeling sick to the bones is the reaction racial inequality should unequivocally evoke. I found myself punched by one allegory after the other, but I wanted to keep reading. I wanted to know more. Wanted to keep looking into an experience so removed from mine, only solemn silence seemed an adequate response at many, many points.

Harris presents the worst of these experiences without fanfare, and he will make you think.


"…All my heroes were evil once.
But at least they returned in time for dinner.
Imagine that. All it takes to be a good man
is to come back."

“…I long for
specificity. African-

American is so infinitely
vague. I stopped believing
in god because god is

an imprecise metaphor. An absent
father.”

“…There’s nothing
to art but imagination. Everyone has that.
Think about it. The wallet is a gun. The cellphone
is a gun. The hand raised and open is a gun.”


I wholeheartedly recommend “Patricide” to fans of Button’s poets and spoken poetry. To those unsure about this type of contemporary poetry, I insist: Give this —and similar books— a chance.

Trigger warnings: gun violence, racial injustice, homophobia, and police brutality.

This was an interesting and thought-provoking poetry collection. One of the major themes was growing up as black in the US, which is far from easy at times and it's refreshing to hear voices talk about such themes.

"There's nothing to art but imagination. Everyone has that. Think about it. The wallet is a gun. The cellphone is a gun. The hands raised and open is a gun. He reached for the paintbrush and drew: BANG! A child died on canvas."

Dave Harris’s Patricide is a poetry book about growing up black in America and people whom you don't want to turn into and a mother's love. It's richly worded and achingly heartfelt. It is rare for a poetry book to have every single poem hit home. But Patricide was breathtakingly close. It's beautiful and raw and painful at times, but it's honest. 4.5/5

"All my heroes were evil once. But at least they returned in time for dinner. Imagine that. All it takes to be a good man is to come back."

(Thanks NetGalley for providing an advanced readers copy in return for an honest review.)

Great work done and characterisation done by the author. Look forward to reading more by this author.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC if this book. I really enjoyed these poems. I definitely would purchase this for my book collection.

Patricide [noun]: the killing of one's father/ the crime of killing your own father

I think Button poetry have perfected the art of knowing which buttons to push, when and how much, just to elicit a response in their readers. In this collection, Dave Harris takes you through a journey that feels like one he ought to make on his own without an audience, a journey into his own awareness, forgiveness and understanding of what it means to be who he chooses to be-and at the root of it lies an absent father, life of fear, lack, anger, and a rage that he fears but thrills him.

Perhaps the most important question he asks all through this collection is "Who's after me?" and suddenly you cannot help but want to read the entire collection again.

Thanks Netgalley for the eARC.

Patricide is Dave Harris's powerful story about becoming a good man despite who his father is, when growing up black in America is anything but easy. I would definitely recommend this to fans of modern poetry.