THAT SPELL - Tate N. Oquendo

ABOUT THE BOOK

Tate N. Oquendo has been cultivating an orchard of memory. In details of shears, smoke, sheds, and other objects, each poem in this collection is a kind of spell. Some works are incantations, some are evocations, and others whisper words of protection against the particular fruit growing in this metaphorical landscape. These patterns are cast along with identities Tate inhabits—disabled, queer, trans, Latinx, witch—collected into a mixture for the wards. That Spell is a sigil where each stroke of trauma and healing manifests in language.

PRAISE FOR THAT SPELL

“The poems in That Spell envelope in a sensory melancholia; a carving and cutting of identity, a pruning away of the blight of domestic expectation, of gender imperative, of love grown sour. At Oquendo's expert tending we are witness to the hard lines of labor, and soft curves of fruit: bruisable and pitted, ripe to bursting with rage. That Spell is both an invocation and inquiry into how the natural world bears witness to our wounds and how we grow ourselves from the twisted roots. It is an elliptical landscape of reversals and returns, seasonalities of grief and respite. Oquendo's gift for imagery becomes a lexicon for the brambles of queer adolescence. That Spell plants a question we all must learn to nurture: How do we unsalt the self we must tend?”

—Michael Todd Cohen, assistant editor at XRAY Literary Magazine

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tate N. Oquendo crafts occult writing, pop culture works, and multimodal art/text hybrids, as well as experiments with alla prima oil painting. Their work can be found in numerous literary journals, a hybrid memoir, a visual poetry collection, and six chapbooks. They serve as an Assistant Editor for Sundress Publications, and are a Zoeglossia Fellow and Crealdé School of Art Fellow. You can find them on Instagram at tatemakesart.

BOOK INFO
Pub Date: October 10, 2023
Print Length: 82 pages
Dimensions: 5.25”x8”
ISBN: 978-1-957392-18-9