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A review by inherbooks
Burning Sugar by Cicely Belle Blain
4.0
Cicely Belle Blain's debut poetry collection, Burning Sugar, is an experience. Cicely is a Black/mixed queer femme from London, who writes nuanced pieces on Black and queer identity, colonization, survivor’s guilt, and the longing for the ancestral home. Their poems range from short to letters, written to individuals such as Philando Castile and Archibald Motley Jr, written with gratitude and questions long left unanswered to victims of crimes repeated throughout history.
These poems move through space and time, 1940s to present-day, Canada, Africa, America to London all in Cecily’s shoes within the ancestral footprints. They also write distinctly to the displaced (read: African diaspora) by first coaxing out the guilt attached to living in a world built on the backs of our ancestors in “Oakland”, “North Carolina” and “Penticton” and then gently soothing with their words in “Dear Diaspora Child”, that managed to calm the storm inside as I read. The author had me questioning myself, how many of us confuse intergenerational trauma for survivor’s guilt?
I wish I could share all my favorite poems from this collection (choosing just one took me hours) but you’ll have to get a copy to take in all its beauty.
These poems move through space and time, 1940s to present-day, Canada, Africa, America to London all in Cecily’s shoes within the ancestral footprints. They also write distinctly to the displaced (read: African diaspora) by first coaxing out the guilt attached to living in a world built on the backs of our ancestors in “Oakland”, “North Carolina” and “Penticton” and then gently soothing with their words in “Dear Diaspora Child”, that managed to calm the storm inside as I read. The author had me questioning myself, how many of us confuse intergenerational trauma for survivor’s guilt?
I wish I could share all my favorite poems from this collection (choosing just one took me hours) but you’ll have to get a copy to take in all its beauty.