Blood Memory, Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize

“There isn’t a weak poem in the book. Writing about the Holocaust can be difficult now, not that it was ever easy…To make fresh powerful poems rooted in Shoah is amazing. She does it by specifics. There are no faceless men in dirty ragged striped uniforms. The people are individualized.”

Marge Piercy, Award Winning Poet and Novelist

“The very unspeakability of the Holocaust can make writing about it fraught. Gail Newman, the child of Holocaust survivors, transcends this difficulty in her vital new collection, Blood Memory, by telling her parents’ stories—the story of millions—in tender, particular detail…This is a book about collective memory, about the importance of story. …Newman…doesn’t flinch from brutality, yet she has achieved something extraordinary. Blood Memory is a testament to humanity. Despite the darkness, the light of the living shines through.”

Ellen Bass, Poet and Chancellor of Academy of American Poets

“In Blood Memory, terse poetic accounts of barbarous inhumanity stir anguish…however, other poems salute high-risk camaraderie, war production sabotage, and extraordinary life-saving resilience in ghettos, camps, and post-liberation years…All of us — Jewish and Gentile alike — are in the poet’s debt as her art propels us forward: Would that our future never again gives cause for such a moving and unforgettable commemoration.”

Arthur B. Shostak, Professor of Sociology and Author of Stealth Altruism: Forbidden Jewish Resistance in the Holocaust