Books
Pine Soot Tendon Bone
Winner of the Washington Prize
Pine Soot Tendon Bone, Radha Marcum’s second book of poems, is an elegy for our times, an attempt to find sanity in a world that seems to have lost its senses, lamenting our unfolding crises—wildfires, climate change, gun violence, a pandemic—alongside personal loss and uprootedness.
The title refers to traditional ingredients of Japanese sumi-e ink stone and, like that art, each poem is born of the elements of nature and the hand of an artist who is exacting yet compassionate. Aware of the perils we face in a fractured world while still able to see the beauty in it, these poems locate hope in the simple but precise act of observing nature.
Available June 2024
_edited.jpg)
“Radha Marcum writes unflinchingly and with a rare synthesis of lyric and scientific intelligence, investigating just what it is to exist with consciousness now.” –Carol Moldaw, author of Beauty Refracted
"Marcum reminds us, in details that will live in our skin and dreams forever, that attention and embodiment are central to our survival. That when we say yes to the grief of now, we say yes to every soaring hawk, every fire-scarred ponderosa, and to each other.” –Amy Irvine, author of Desert Cabal: A New Season in the Wilderness
“With champion empathy and visual prowess, Radha Marcum invites us to feel and sense more deeply our dynamic, contradictory world, insisting time and again on attentive poetry's gorgeous music and crisp, accurate magic.” –Cyrus Cassells, 2021 Texas Poet Laureate and author of Is There Room for Another Horse on Your Horse Ranch?
Bloodline
Winner of the 2018 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for Poetry
Bloodline delves into the difficult family history of the work of Radha Marcum’s grandfather on the Manhattan Project, building the first atomic bombs in Los Alamos, New Mexico, during World War II. The poems trace trajectories irrevocably altered by Los Alamos and the ambiguity of being a part of that story. Deeply attentive to landscape, Bloodline is as much a collection shaped by geology and ecology as it is about personal and cultural histories. Canyons, creeks, and rivers are the lifeblood of our civilization, one that has grown to create apocalyptic technology. In these bloodlines, there is a deep connection to our ancestors, as well as the unpredictable paths of our own lives and how we shape future generations. And yet, the most important bloodline here is a personal one—a voice in wilderness that seeks for that which has carved its song.
Order Now
“Line by line, Radha cuts her own way toward understanding the deep story she is in, a story we all share.” –William S. Barnes, The Ledgerbook
“Bloodline is a mesmerizing, intelligent book, full of beauty, science, and ancestry.” –Michael Henry, author of Active Gods, Executive Director of Lighthouse Writers Workshop
“Fusion, fission, breakability, unbreakability, incorruptibility are all themes that the poet works into her lines. This beautiful poetry bears witness without being didactic or overly political—and its message is clear.” –Anne Harding Woodworth, Poet Lore
Pine Soot Tendon Bone
Winner of the Washington Prize
Pine Soot Tendon Bone, Radha Marcum’s second book of poems, is an elegy for our times, an attempt to find sanity in a world that seems to have lost its senses, lamenting our unfolding crises—wildfires, climate change, gun violence, a pandemic—alongside personal loss and uprootedness.
The title refers to traditional ingredients of Japanese sumi-e ink stone and, like that art, each poem is born of the elements of nature and the hand of an artist who is exacting yet compassionate. Aware of the perils we face in a fractured world while still able to see the beauty in it, these poems locate hope in the simple but precise act of observing nature.
Available June 2024
_edited.jpg)
“Radha Marcum writes unflinchingly and with a rare synthesis of lyric and scientific intelligence, investigating just what it is to exist with consciousness now.” –Carol Moldaw, author of Beauty Refracted
"Marcum reminds us, in details that will live in our skin and dreams forever, that attention and embodiment are central to our survival. That when we say yes to the grief of now, we say yes to every soaring hawk, every fire-scarred ponderosa, and to each other.” –Amy Irvine, author of Desert Cabal: A New Season in the Wilderness
“With champion empathy and visual prowess, Radha Marcum invites us to feel and sense more deeply our dynamic, contradictory world, insisting time and again on attentive poetry's gorgeous music and crisp, accurate magic.” –Cyrus Cassells, 2021 Texas Poet Laureate and author of Is There Room for Another Horse on Your Horse Ranch?
Bloodline
Winner of the 2018 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for Poetry
Bloodline delves into the difficult family history of the work of Radha Marcum’s grandfather on the Manhattan Project, building the first atomic bombs in Los Alamos, New Mexico, during World War II. The poems trace trajectories irrevocably altered by Los Alamos and the ambiguity of being a part of that story. Deeply attentive to landscape, Bloodline is as much a collection shaped by geology and ecology as it is about personal and cultural histories. Canyons, creeks, and rivers are the lifeblood of our civilization, one that has grown to create apocalyptic technology. In these bloodlines, there is a deep connection to our ancestors, as well as the unpredictable paths of our own lives and how we shape future generations. And yet, the most important bloodline here is a personal one—a voice in wilderness that seeks for that which has carved its song.
Order Now