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When The Chant Comes

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Kay Ulanday Barrett has been bringing his unique poetry to audiences for over a decade, unpicking vital political questions around race, sickness and disability and gender, and chronicling the everydayness of life in the U.S. Empire with humor, poignancy and inimitable vitality. Now at last a generous selection of his work will be available in print. Each of these poems is a brilliant little story. Taken together, they show a master craftsman at the top of his game. Pre-order them now.

116 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2016

8 people are currently reading
463 people want to read

About the author

Kay Ulanday Barrett

5 books71 followers
Kay Ulanday Barrett is a poet, essayist, and cultural strategist. They are the 2022 winner of the Cy Twombly Award for Poetry by the Foundation of Contemporary Art. Barrett’s second poetry collection, More Than Organs received a 2021 Stonewall Book Honor Award by the American Library Association and is a 2021 Lambda Literary Finalist in Transgender poetryy. They have featured at The Lincoln Center, The U.N., Symphony Space, The Poetry Project, Princeton University, NYU, The Dodge Poetry Foundation, The Hemispheric Institute, Brooklyn Museum, and more. They’ve received fellowship invitations from MacDowell, Lambda Literary, Monson Arts, Drunken Boat, VONA, The Home School, VCCA, and Macondo. They are a 3x Pushcart Prize nominee and 2x Best of the Net nominee. Their contributions are found in The New York Times, The Advocate, F(r)iction, The Lily, Asian American Literary Review, Vogue, PBS News Hour, The Rumpus, NYLON, The Maine Review, Academy of American Poets, NYLON, WBAI Radio, NPR, and more. They have written two poetry books, When The Chant Comes (Topside Press, 2016) and More Than Organs (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020). They currently reside in Jersey City with their jowly dog.

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5 stars
77 (66%)
4 stars
22 (18%)
3 stars
13 (11%)
2 stars
4 (3%)
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0 (0%)
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
Profile Image for zaynab.
63 reviews233 followers
November 26, 2016
It's amazing how you can follow someone on a blog for years and correspond digitally and yet realize in the blink of a page turn that you've never read their poetry before or heard them before. I realized while reading this book in the bathtub that Kay and I have mostly talked about food, which there is plenty of all up and through the pages of this book of tenderness. So it's something amazing and beautiful to finally get to travel down the road someone has paved for themselves. I thoroughly enjoyed Kay's poetry; every rumination, lamentation, love note, bits of heartache and joy alike. I'm eager for the next one, but I'll also settle for an autographed copy of their cookbook "Recipes for the People" as well.
Profile Image for Bogi Takács.
Author 62 books650 followers
Read
February 2, 2017
(I'll probably review this one at length later, but I thought it was good)
Profile Image for Sunny.
245 reviews40 followers
February 8, 2017
What a gift! This collection of poetry from Kay Ulanday Barrett speaks deeply and honestly to their life. From diaspora to disability, fighting for survival and fighting to be recognized, the complexities of family privilege, and more. Medicine for queer and trans people of color. Medicine for chronically ill and disabled folks. It's poetry that sings and sways as it moves through you.
911 reviews39 followers
December 16, 2018
In my ongoing quest to read more trans books by trans writers, I picked up this gorgeous book of poetry and couldn't put it down. The poet does that thing with words where they seem to leap off the page and make me feel things all over my body that defy description. I've been reading a lot of poetry lately and this is some of the very best poetry I've encountered.
Profile Image for Robin.
253 reviews10 followers
January 12, 2021
A devastatingly beautiful collection of poetry. Barrett’s voice incorporates his unique intersectional experience as a trans, queer, disabled, biracial child of an immigrant, yet it feels anyone can relate to the emotions evoked in each piece. A powerful testament to Barrett’s mother and his community.
Profile Image for Geleni.
7 reviews4 followers
August 5, 2017
A testimony of queer, sick and disabled, POC life layered with tenderness, humor, and loss. I felt myself and people I love held in these poems and still feel the warmth of it. I'm so grateful.
Profile Image for Megan Stolz.
Author 1 book16 followers
October 31, 2017
I'm not used to reading poetry like this. I was taken aback at so much slang, but of course you can put slang in poetry. I think it actually makes it more approachable. I read about Kay Ulanday Barrett in an issue of "Bitch" magazine, and I was interested enough to find their collection. I'm glad I did because Kay's is a voice that isn't normally heard in American poetry but needs to be there. I know that he performs poetry (spoken word?) as well, and I'm interested now in hearing them speak.
132 reviews30 followers
May 3, 2019
While there were some grammatical errors that, at times were distracting, I really loved the strength with which Barrett wrote, and found some of his writing to be simply exquisite. So glad I (randomly) stumbled upon this book!
Profile Image for Jen.
Author 4 books313 followers
January 30, 2019
Beautiful and difficult. Big and small, loud and quiet. Kay is brilliant and this book is too.
Profile Image for Sandra.
1 review5 followers
August 4, 2017
Kay Ulanday Barrett has a gift for putting feelings and experiences into words that seemed unnameable before. What a blessing to our people.
Profile Image for Lynn.
15 reviews
Read
January 25, 2020
queer, trans, filipinx. Beautiful poetry. I love the unconventional structure and use of fonts as art.
642 reviews7 followers
June 24, 2023
Another collection of poetry that I wanted to like more than I did, sigh.
There are some gems in here but overall I can't give this a higher rating and it makes me sad.
Profile Image for Derrick Contreras.
222 reviews7 followers
December 25, 2024
A really solid collection about disability, race, and queerness. I’m surprised more people haven’t read this.
Profile Image for Sarah.
1,597 reviews40 followers
March 23, 2025
"you long for
someone
anyone
who lived
stayed
bothered
long
enough at all."

Profile Image for Bug.
77 reviews4 followers
December 3, 2020
I loved a lot of these poems. Most of them were really emotional, which is my favourite thing is poetry, and a lot of lines really hit me. But stylistically, some of them just weren't for me. I'm personally not as into the longer, paragraph-style poetry in written form, and there were a few with that style. There weren't any that I disliked, but just based off my personal preference I didn't enjoy them as much as some others.
Still an incredible poetry collection and I think the author is amazingly talented
Profile Image for Leslie (updates on SG).
1,489 reviews38 followers
March 11, 2019
3.5 stars. I appreciated Barrett's way with words, especially in the poems "Uncertain," "I want to call and ask you to come over," "YOU are SO Brave," and "tools to survive mercury in retrograde."

Some inspired passages:
Cry out in gutted sentences
cupping hope knowing that it isn't enough to
be a woman or poor or immigrant or
a person of color or queer, but
enough to fight against being fragments.
--"Uncertain"

don't try to console me with,
well, at least we're under the same moon.

at least the moon gets to see you beam in person.
--"I want to call and ask you to come over"

the problem isn't that you are not enough, the gift is that you are incredibly all too much.
--"tools to survive mercury in retrograde"
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews

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