https://www.joshuaburtonpoet.com/home-1 daily 1.0 2025-10-08 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61fe1757199c974967a8ea47/e6a2bfd1-8bb2-43f5-8b70-289175bb3314/Burton_GraceEngine-c.jpg https://www.joshuaburtonpoet.com/home daily 0.75 2024-11-19 https://www.joshuaburtonpoet.com/about-me daily 0.75 2023-04-06 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61fe1757199c974967a8ea47/f45b1714-5df7-4dc5-8b54-9af7fc5a2900/IMG_0025.jpg About Me - About Me Joshua Burton is a poet and educator from Houston, TX and received his MFA in poetry at Syracuse University. He is a 2019 Tin House Winter Workshop Scholar, 2019 Juniper Summer Writing Institute scholarship winner, 2019 Center for African American Poetry and Poetics fellowship finalist, received the Honorable Mention for the 2018 Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize, 2020 Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing finalist, and a 2023 Elizabeth George Foundation grant recipient. His work can be found in Mississippi Review, Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, Conduit, TriQuarterly, Black Warrior Review, Grist, and Indiana Review. His chapbook Fracture Anthology is currently out with Ethel and his debut poetry collection Grace Engine is out with the University of Wisconsin Press. https://www.joshuaburtonpoet.com/publications daily 0.75 2024-04-30 https://www.joshuaburtonpoet.com/pagecv daily 0.75 2025-02-16 https://www.joshuaburtonpoet.com/contact-1 daily 0.75 2024-12-16 https://www.joshuaburtonpoet.com/fracture-anthology daily 0.75 2023-01-22 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61fe1757199c974967a8ea47/ae3c861b-340a-4b23-9aa7-31e708bdfeda/Fracture+Cover.jpg Fracture Anthology (BUY NOW) In an interview with BBC, poet Sylvia Plath claimed that one shouldn't approach the poem in a narcissistic way, but take internal chaos or even madness and turn it outwards as a tool to shed light on issues larger than yourself, like the Holocaust or the atomic bombing in Hiroshima. I've attempted to take on a similar approach with my poetry. In particular, I’ve taken on a poetry project that demands the attention and respect of sympathetic introspection. I began writing poems about my mother. When I told her of my interest in writing about her life, she gave me her journals she’s been collecting for the past 30 years to turn them into poems. The idea was to capture her at her most honest and vulnerable and turn them into poems that accurately represent her in an authentic way, while also containing introspection that reaches beyond her personal experience. How Plath used events like the Holocaust as a way to reveal herself and to have herself in return reveal these events, I’m taking my mother’s life and attempting to internalize them, because I believe she has taken on an emotional war within herself for decades. And my job as a poet is to place a mirror within myself and outside of myself as a way to reflect her experiences: being raped from the age of five by her older brother, dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder, and dealing with post-partum depression. Looking at Plath’s statements in a contemporary lens, we see a lot of problems with her using war atrocities for the sake of metaphor. Along, with Plath, I’m aware of the potential troubles of a man writing in the voice of a woman who dealt with sexual abuse, even if that woman is his mother. Writing this collection has been a constant battle in that way. But my attempt in writing in her voice comes from my desire to get as close as possible to her to understand her and in return better understand myself. In many ways, I can never understand her experiences, but I am also of her, a product of her, and I carry pieces of her in me. So I feel the need to get near those pieces. Cover and Inner Art by Colombian illustrator Zumbambico zumbambicoarte.com www.instagram.com/zumbambico https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61fe1757199c974967a8ea47/530616df-c1cb-4ece-9cf5-003d97efc425/Attachment-1.png Fracture Anthology (BUY NOW) - Fracture Anthology Audiobook https://www.joshuaburtonpoet.com/grace-engine-spring-2023 daily 0.75 2023-08-26 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61fe1757199c974967a8ea47/17dd4ab3-b24c-4e7e-9988-e48c8067918a/Burton_GraceEngine-c.jpg Grace Engine (BUY NOW) - GRACE ENGINE Grace Engine is a poetry manuscript concentrating on the micro effects of generational and familial trauma through one’s life. The poems meditate on the possibilities and shortcomings that comes with the myth of black strength. In order to better examine these ways of black living, the poems reaches out to family and other historical black figures who were cut off from history through lynchings or through black insanity. These people are held as statues and mirrors. The poems question whether black strength is an inherit part of blackness. We are told “black don’t crack” as a way to show the endurance of black bodies through this American war-field. But I believe the ability to cope under the worst of conditions shouldn’t rid us of the very human response of sometimes being broken. The poems hope to uncover the tension in this discussion. How does one manage the line between shame and accountability? How do you navigate a life knowing your black won’t break, even as it has always seemed to be just that. Praise for GRACE ENGINE “One of the most compelling books I have read this year. But what does that mean? It means that we are invited to enter the landscape where the speaker's ‘been having / a different relationship / with ghosts.’ It means that history is a catastrophe but a grandmother can turn ‘looking into a language, a season / whittled down to degrees.’ It means that the empire corrodes but there is still music which these pages unearth and offer, as a consolation, perhaps, no as evidence: evidence that the soul lives despite the terror of this time. Because Burton knows that ‘wind from a mouth can coax the flame into living,’ Grace Engine is inconsolable and yet consoling. A very beautiful book.”— Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa “No poet I’ve worked with in forty years’ teaching has wowed me more with his talent & smarts & heart than young Joshua Burton. His first collection, Grace Engine, is destined to be this year’s star debut.”— Mary Karr, author of Tropic of Squalor and The Liars’ Club “With Grace Engine, Joshua Burton has given readers a remarkable meditation on the resilience of the Black spirit, subject to threat and terror from within and without. Against the restless ghosts of history, under the eyes of God, through the whispers of one’s own wounded heart, Burton has laid lines to page that explore the many meanings of grace and their contribution to keeping two feet planted firmly on the ground despite all odds and oppositions. This collection will move you with its honesty and courage. It will lift you. It will light a way through the darkness.”— Cortney Lamar Charleston, author of Doppelgangbanger and Telepathologies “Grace Engine documents the ravages of internalized antiblackness in restless lines whose ‘Language is like a month ending / with a fire.’ To aid in reclaiming himself from Black social and literal death, Joshua Burton assembles an archive of Black men whose minds were troubled by antiblackness and Black folks whose lives were ended by it. In confronting textual and visual evidence of white supremacy, in placing family history alongside it, his speakers confront the decision of whether to stay in a world inseparable from racist violence. Ultimately coming to understand ‘how much my indecision is decision,’ he enters into a tentative, complex relation with Black aliveness. Burton might write ‘in the language of breakdown,’ but his speakers ‘choose to fill my hands with stay here.’ The way to bless once meant to mark with blood, this book is both balm and wound.” — Brian Teare author of Doomstead Days and The Empty Form Goes All the Way to Heaven ORDER AT: UWPRESS | AMAZON | BARNES & NOBLE | BRAZOS BOOKSTORE | INDIEBOUND | GREEN APPLE BOOKS | NOWHERE BOOKSHOP | https://www.joshuaburtonpoet.com/readings daily 0.75 2026-02-12 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61fe1757199c974967a8ea47/c541ef6c-b93e-44bb-bb68-57a4eadc806d/IMG_0728.JPG Readings - Readings Upcoming Readings 3 Year Anniversary Reading for Grace Engine @ Kindred Stories with Chankrisna Tea (March 21, 2025) (Houston, TX) Past Readings “Waltz” Collab Event (with Colombian illustrator Zumbambico at Artique on June 23, 2022) Green Apple Books on the Park (Virtual reading July 28, 2022) Ethel Zoom Reading (July 31, 2022) Public Poetry Library Reading Series - Online (August 6, 2022) The Poetry Vlog - Live Book Launch Joshua Burton, Zumbambico and Sara Lefsyk (September 17, 2022) table//Feast - Fall Dinner Fundraiser & Reading (October 15, 2022) Basket Books and Art w/ Zumbambico, Chankrisna Tea, & Ramelle Ramos (December 10, 2022) Bread & Poetry Ep 10: Hawaiian Rolls & the "Grace Engine" with Joshua Burton AWP 2023 offsite reading (March 9, 2023) (Seattle, WA) Brazos Bookstore Grace Engine Book Launch w/ Chankrisna Tea (March 21, 2023) (Houston, TX) Gris Literatura Reading w/ K. Iver, Su Cho, & Anthony Sutton (March 28, 2023) (Online) Keep the Channel Open - Episode 139: Joshua Burton (2023) Black Hole Coffee House talk (April 14, 2023) (Houston, TX) Gulf Coast Reading Series (April 14, 2023) (Houston, TX) San Antonio Book Festival (April 15, 2023) (San Antonio, TX) bar//DRINK Reading Series (April 30, 2023) (Houston, TX) The Personhood Project Ep. 15: Joshua Burton (2023) Boldface Conference Reading (May 23, 2023) (Houston, TX) Craft Talk and Reading / Q&A Poison Pen Reading Series @ Poison Girl Bar (May 25, 2023) (Houston, TX) Skylight Books Reading w/ Jessica Abughattas & Meg Shevenock (June 7, 2023) (Los Angeles, CA) Green Apple Books on the Park Reading w/ N. Cuzzi & Tongo Eisen-Martin (June 9, 2023) (San Francisco, CA) Back Porch Series (June 10, 2023) (San Francisco, CA) Inprint Educators Institute Reading/Craft Talk/Q&A (June 27, 2023) (Houston, TX) The Splice Poetry Series w/ Nikki Ummel (July 8, 2023) (New Orleans, LA) Unnameable Books Reading w/ Alonso Llerena & Bridget O'Bernstein (July 14, 2023) (NYC) Raymond Carver Reading at Syracuse University (December 6, 2023) (Syracuse, NY) P&W Debut Poets - Online Event (January 25, 2024) (Online) APW Panel — Heretic: Confronting Religious Trauma Amid Growing Extremism (February 10, 2024) (Kansas City, MO) Kindred Stories Reading w/ Olatunde Osinaike & Ayokunle Falomo (March 2, 2024) (Houston, TX) Madison Public Library w/ Sadia Hassan & Patrycja Humienik (April 10, 2024) (Madison, WI) Living Writers Series Reading at San Diego State University (April 17, 2024) (Online) table//FEAST Reading (April 27, 2024) (Houston, TX)