With her debut poetry collection, Prayer for Relief, Krystle May Statler introduces us to an interplay of form and language to unravel what is otherwise shapeless. Drawing from her experience in the aftermath of her older brother, BJ's, murder by the Inglewood Police Department in 2019, the poems act as tentacles reaching out and attempting to make sense of the nonsensical. Statler asks the reader to bear witness, to consider a body after it is no longer a body, to survive alongside her in this now brotherless life.

If you're in Multnomah County, you can check out a copy at the Northwest or Central locations!!!

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prayer for relief praise

Krystle does not shy away from the dark fringes of grief and how it takes us on a journey of questioning to resentful acceptance.

—Camari Carter Hawkins,

author of Death by Comb

Unafraid of what comes from harboring such pain, each poem stands alone while crashing into one another.

—Monica Prince,

author of Roadmap: A Choreopoem

Statler brings the horror of gun violence in America directly to her readers as she chronicles the complete and complex

life of her brother, BJ.

—F. Douglas Brown,

author of Zero to Three

...a call to action, asking us to imagine,

to plan, to carry out the healing that real justice requires, and to "repeat until the shootings stop."

—Jennifer Perrine,

author of Again and

No Confession, No Mass

After reading Krystle May Statler's debut collection, I wondered how I ever navigated my grief journey without it.

—Anne Marie Wells,

author of Survived By and Mother, (v)

...it is also a call to us all to be "returned to the earth raw," to understand her loss for what it truly is-a loss for us all.

—Daniela Naomi Molnar,

author of Chorus

Prayer for Relief, is the Swiss Army knife

of poetry collections - it is not bound

by a single function...

—Catie Hannigan,

author of The Mutable Colors

& Names of Things