From the very first line I was hooked. I knew I was about to read a tight, artistic, profound collection. Sure as hell, I'm absolutely obliterated by the line "Ever time I crack an egg I think of skulls." Like what the fuck is that? How is it so simple and so great and so... I don't know-- and that I don't know feeling is poetry to me. It passes that Wislawa szymborska test for me-- "Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words,
then labor heavily so that they may seem light." Because this collection feels so light that I know how heavy the labor must have been. Good shit.

One day, I hope a review on a dust jacket reads "Good shit."- Hannah

Thanks for the ARC.

Fablemaker by Mandy Moe Pwint Tu is a superb poetry collection reflecting upon the speaker's relationship with their father and their home country. Through the motif of 'Dear Fablemaker' poems, Tu explores the impact a violent and then absent father has on a child, and in turn how this stands as a metaphor for the turmoil experienced by Burma, then Myanmar. If we consider the speaker's home country as a 'fatherland', we see how the speaker's relationship to the self, identity and others is impacted by the speaker's father as he battles himself, alcoholism and, later, Covid-19, all while the place they yearn to call home is irrevocably changed by political upheaval and state violence. And what makes Fablemaker so brilliant is how this raw and gritty subject matter is woven through with sensory and figurative language - there is a softness of rain, water and air that pervades all of the hurt; - suggesting that love and hope still remain even in the face of immense loss and grief.

An aptly-titled, beautiful, lyric blend of myth-like poetry, personal history, and Myanmar's trauma.