Strange Children

Strange Children is an emotional reckoning of medical trauma, marriage, family, loss, and adoption. In simple, direct language, the poems here are honest, hard, and hopeful as they explore the “loss of what we never had / but dreamt of—not allowed to dream / of that life any longer.” These are poems you can feel.

“These poems are frightening and relentless but Dan Brady doesn’t just tell us, he asks us to live through these experiences. It’s intense, recurring, and pared down to only what’s necessary. The arc of grief and a resolution of grace is enacted with the fewest possible flourishes. It’s dark but there is a light at the heart of it; it reaches out to imagine the lives of others, and the reader will end up right there with him when he says ‘I have lived a thousand lives with these children and the grief and joy of each one is a blessing to me.’” —Matthew Rohrer, author of Destroyer & Preserver

“Like he writes in his poem ‘The Morning Is a Sea,’
on our saddest days
we can still seek and we
can still find.
In Strange Children, Dan Brady mines sadness to unearth beauty in the struggle, to bolster hope with each breath, and to survive, line after line. This is poetry at its most honest and engaging, each poem a compact gem of perseverance and belief.” —Teri Ellen Cross-Davis, author of Haint

Read a quick Interview with Dan (and a sample poem)

Review at The Millions

Review at Smartish Pace

Dan Brady on Book Fight! Podcast

Dan Brady is the author of two chapbooks, Cabin Fever / Fossil Record (Flying Guillotine Press) and Leroy Sequences (Horse Less Press). He is the poetry editor of Barrelhouse and lives in Arlington, Virginia with his wife and two kids. Strange Children is his first full-length poetry collection. Learn more at danbrady.org.