We are delighted to announce the long-anticipated publication of What is Given, Brit Washburn’s second collection of poetry.
 
Elegant, luxurious and full of courageous witness, Washburn’s poems walk around the lake of living, pointing out the broken surfaces and what shines there. “All things inexplicable, indefensible,/ Frightening.”  
 
This work claims as its territory the world as we find it, in its flux and flaws; and how we find, or sometimes lose, ourselves within. Following several love affairs through their dissolution and reformation, amidst the ruins of covid and the redemptions of gardens, sex, food, and children; the poet finds that what is given is always more than it seems. In a voice deeply attuned to the sensual these poems reveal “how what begins with naming/ becomes about relationship, / attention the beginning/ of devotion.”  
 
Here is a wise voice of experience that guides us to consider delight, among all the things we are given. “Part daybook on living a meaningful life, part phenomenological treatise, What Is Given is a field guide to the interior. Again and again, we are brought to places and difficulties and moments of grace, and each time, a wise guide directs our eye, shows us what lies underneath, and offers a way forward.”  —Sebastian Matthews, author of In My Father’s Footsteps
 
“In poems acutely aware of loss, Washburn comes back to the redeeming beauty of the sensual world. These are poems infused with love and a profound trust in, as she titles one of her poems, ‘the radical hospitality of the senses.’ With poetry that reminds us to be grateful for what is given, Washburn establishes herself as a necessary poet for our difficult times.”  —Ed Falco, author of X in the Tickseed