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At its centre, Duende de Burque is a love letter to Alburquerque and its surroundings - the Sandia Mountains, the Rio Grande Bosque, and all the people whose spirits fill these spaces. It is an exploration of one poet's search for duende, that elusive state of spontaneous expression and authenticity.

In her debut poetry collection, Michelle Otero celebrates the importance of water and the bosque to the people of Albuquerque. Otero shares her reflections on the high desert - where she is rooted, where she draws her strength, and where she has flourished - and she invites readers to do the same.

The Blood Poems is one part bloodletting, one part healing, and one part sensuous celebration as Jessica Helen Lopez lays out what it means to be a strong brown woman, a single mother, and the kickass bard that the twenty-first century needs. Lopez openly faces a damaging childhood, sex, divorce, and racial injustice in these poems. She proves that love is as complicated as lovemaking-messy and lusty, raucous and powerful, capable of amazing highs and abysmal lows. She proves that when a woman learns to love herself, she will live a fierce and full life and teach her daughters to do the same.

Hakim Bellamy's latest collection rings with the same power and grace as the people he lauds within its pages, including Nikki Giovanni and Martin Luther King Jr. He celebrates Albuquerque and New Mexico, taking the good with the bad, and reminds Burquenos that any day when you wake up along the Rio Grande is a good day. As Bellamy celebrates the power of creativity and community within the city and the nation, he also demands that we face our society's faults, especially those of racism, racial profiling, and law-enforcement violence. The poems collected here insist that with the power to do right, people also have a responsibility to themselves, their loved ones, and complete strangers to be better and strive harder. Undoubtedly Bellamy is leading this charge, lighting the way for anyone ready to listen.