A Minnesota Book Award Finalist in Poetry A CLMP Firecracker Award Finalist in Poetry “Some girls are not made,” torrin a. greathouse writes, “but spring from the dirt.” Guided by a devastatingly precise hand, Wound from the Mouth of a Wound —selected by Aimee Nezhukumatathil as the winner of the 2020 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry—challenges a canon that decides what shades of beauty deserve to live in a poem. greathouse celebrates “buckteeth & ulcer.” She odes the pulp of a bedsore. She argues that the vestigial is not devoid of meaning, and in kinetic and vigorous language, she honors bodies the world too often wants dead. These poems ache, but they do not surrender. They bleed, but they spit the blood in our eyes. Their imagery pulses on the page, fractal and fluid, blooming in a medley of forms: broken essays, haibun born of erasure, a sonnet meant to be read in the mirror. greathouse’s poetry demands more of language and those who wield it. “I’m still learning not to let a stranger speak / me into a funeral.” Concrete and evocative,  Wound from the Mouth of a Wound  is a testament to persistence, even when the body is not allowed to thrive. greathouse—elegant, vicious, “a one-girl armageddon” draped in crushed velvet—teaches us that fragility is not synonymous with flaw. " Wound from the Mouth of a Wound is a densely packed treasure trove of verse. Bodies rise up here as sites of gender, trauma, ability, and violence. A gut punch you won't soon shake off, this is one of 2020's absolute best releases." ― Bustle, "The Best Books of 2020" "Sometimes, if I'm lucky, every year or so, there is a poetry collection that completely floors me, unnerves me, and opens my eyes by sheer force of words. May I introduce you to Wound from the Mouth of a Wound ? . . . Each page, each sentence, surprises and cuts deep and will keep you reading, unable to turn away." ― Kate Layte, Papercuts J.P., BuzzFeed's "42 Great Books to Read this Spring, Recommended by Our Favorite Indie Booksellers" "[ Wound from the Mouth of a Wound ] positively thrums with the stuff of life: blood, sweat, pus, tears, spit. Like the body, these poems feel both breathtakingly tenuous and surreally strong; they are a celebration―of survival and of the effort it takes to do just that." ― Refinery29, "Best New Books of Fall 2020" "In [greathouse's] debut, they so brilliantly render emotion and empowerment in the context of transness, disability, and art that it leaves the reader breathless. There is a dazzling deftness to greathouse's simultaneous construction and destruction of poems, bodies, life, that makes this collection unforgettable." ― Book Marks, "Most Anticipated Poetry Collections of Fall/Winter 2020" "These poems are like the sharp, bright rays that pierce through on a stormy day: illuminating, unsparing, & viciously beautiful." ― Books Are Magic, "Recommended Reading" "Demanding, supple, vast." ― Ms. Magazine "greathouse writes, 'I cannot find the poem in all of this, but I can't bear to let it go unspoken.' Luckily for readers, she finds the poem time and again in these revelatory lyrics . . . After turning language into a verb, greathouse holds out the tantalizing possibility that we could use language to imagine worlds that welcome marginalized bodies." ― Minneapolis Star Tribune "[A] number of the poems in torrin a. greathouse's debut collection Wound from the Mouth of a Wound evoked a pretty powerful emotions in me, not because the poems were raw but because greathouse put a lot of work into juxtaposing images and narratives action to jarring and evocative effect . . . This level of care and energy to the craft of poetry runs throughout." ― The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Selection, December 2020 "[ Wound from the Mouth of a Wound ] artfully demonstrates greathouse's proficiency with language and her energetic ability to transform images in service to her story . . . greathouse calls readers into a community that values trans people and people with disabilities." ― Lambda Literary " Wound from the Mouth of a Wound is a tremendous contribution to an emerging trans and queer poetics that is complicating language and the canon in order to reflect an equally complex human experience of beauty and erasure. greathouse is a precise, miraculous surgeon with language who sews together a deep gash in our body politic and poetic imagination." ― The Normal School "The glittering, energetic debut from greathouse seeks to honor and give voices to all bodies . . . It is the persistence and desire for survival in these poems that make this collection unflinching in its vulnerability and its power." ― Publisher's Weekly "Interesting to note exactly who picks up the poetry pen. What life experience, what event, led to the decision? And did the poet even have a choice, or was poetry the last, best way to express what they knew hadn't been expressed before? In the work of transgender, cripple-punk torrin a. greathouse