What a surprise this has been! A very solid poetry collection full of vivid, sensual imagery. It addresses Black pain extensively and yet underneath it is a current of life, pleasure and hope that reaches and holds on to Black joy.

In a way, the poems constitute an archive—of the personal life of the speaker, certainly, but also of historical events and cultural artifacts. I found the extensive references engaging and playful (and anyone who so openly praises Ross Gay not one, but several times, automatically gains points in my book). Lastly, I liked the metalanguage, the self-awareness of the poems as objects—it always makes me think an author has deeply considered their craft and that's something I appreciate as a reader. If I had to pick one favorite poem it would have to be "Broken Ode for the Epigraph", so full of delightful images! I will keep an eye on this author.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I must start by saying that I am not the primary intended audience for this thematic collection of poems. As a single never-married hetero White woman, there were some poems that, while I could appreciate their structure and cadence, I could never fully "get" due to lack of shared experiences. But there was just something about this collection that clicked with me. Oftentimes, I felt like a voyeur on a private therapy session. Other times, I was a fly on the wall during a stream of consciousness talk with oneself. What I appreciated most was the incorporation of pivotal influences in the poet's development, historical references from her collegiate education in Africana and Women's studies, musical influences, and even nature. The dedication to her craft was apparent. These poems felt fresh and unique and unable to be put in a singular box. 

Thank you to Atria Books | Washington Square Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This is a wonderful collection. Clark’s poetry beautifully navigates the complexities of respect, self-love, and the emotions tied to living in a body that isn’t always treated with care. Her writing is soft yet full of strength—it captivated me from the first page. I had to really sit and marinate in what I had just read, in between some of the poems. What talent.

(Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review!)

Tiana Clark's stream of consciousness flow is absolutely the truth in all of us. I found myself in so many of her phrases.

"Ellipsis, then I forget.
I balk.
I lazy the bed.
I wallow when I write.
I truth when I lie.
I throw a book when a poem undoes me."

This is a memoir so personal and brokenly honest, it feels like walking in someone else's pajamas. Such a visceral experience.

And Cardi B is a must-listen. IYKYK

Clark might say her work is own voices, black joy, post-apocalyptic ("The end is not near but behind us.")

And now I must find Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude. And, honestly, the works in the author's notes are a veritable bookstore shopping list.

Thank you Netgalley for the arc. This was beautifully written. I really enjoyed this book and the cover is very pretty.

I decided to read this because the cover made me feel like I was going to get something raw and real - I was absolutely right. The author lays herself out there for all to see and judge. The poems are not pretty and unified, they are messy and uncomfortable just like life. No matter your background this selection of poems will make you look inside yourself and confront your own dark corners. Fantastic job!

3.75

📚 Review: This was very vulnerable and lyrical. Tiana Clark’s poems were real and stream of consciousness, and I enjoyed this collection. Some were breathtaking, and some didn’t resonate as much, but overall, this was strong. The pieces about the little things when someone leaves like needing to fill the dogs water bowl hit hard.
One of my favourite quotes:
”I regret that I was capable of causing pain. I think it’s important to implicate the self. The knife shouldn’t exit the cake clean.” (Quote added to review after publication date.)
💫 Rating: 3.75/5

This was a great collection of poetry. Vivid, visceral and engaging. I wasn't sure about the beginning but the further I got in the more I enjoyed the collection. The organization of the collection added to it and I hope to see more poems from this author in the future.

Thank you to Net Galley and Atria/Washington Square Press for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. This was an emotional and memorable collections of poems written after her divorce which formed several poems about love and loss as well as topics as life and love in general, the Black Bachelorette, the politics of educational institutions, and racism. I very much enjoyed her last collection of poems and this one was wonderful as well. She is able to go to deep places and put it in to words that are lyrical, raw and touching.

✷ updated review 2025/03/14

“I think it all takes courage: falling in love, staying in love, leaving love that no longer serves you, loving yourself—”


⤷ thoughts:

i rly liked the way the poems were arranged, as well as the expression in them 💝 i thought personally the first around half was less enjoyable than the last half, but that's all person preference, anyway. i think this is an especially moving collection esp in all the feelings & thoughts expressed!

thank you to netgalley for the chance to review!

This poetry collection celebrates Black identity, womanhood, queerness, and more. It pairs traumas of life with joy, love, and attraction. It was not my favorite poetry collection because it didn’t necessarily resonate with me, but I can still appreciate it for the value & representation it brings.

Poems & Poetry are not my usual reading. But this book was fantastic. The poetry opened my eyes and made me feel all sorts of things. I really enjoyed reading this book.

I'm on a journey to find poetry I love, and while this one didn't quite hit the mark for me, I can appreciate the vulnerability and attention to detail and language that Tiana Clark put into this collection. Scorched Earth is a poetry collection that explores themes of finding oneself after divorce, selfhood, queerness, and much more.

The lyricism of the collection was, in my experience, its strength but also its weakness. At times, I really enjoyed the language and the use of imagery, but other times it seemed to get in the way - an abundance of line breaks, and sometimes jarring disruption in diction and tone.

Scorched Earth is a deeply personal and engaging collection of poetry. The writing is captivating, lyrical, and emption-filled. I thoroughly enjoyed it and was very moved.

I loveddddd some of these poems.
Some I didn’t.
But Clark has a voice and a lyrical way about her poetry, that is entrancing.
Such a beautiful collection.
Thank you netgalley!

This collection of poetry follows the cut, present, and aftermath of a life derailed to a new path. With pointed use of epigraphs and varied poetry structure, the poems within capture the essence of the moment in time and the spirit of transition. Very visceral and unapologetic.

This is my first foray into the works of Tiana Clark and I've already put in a hold on I Cannot Talk About the Trees Without the Blood. Scorched Earth is a gorgeous collection of poetry that centres selfhood and explores the various meanings of what it means to inhabit a body, to live with grief and feelings, to grow and shrink, and to simply exist. I adore the use of craft and structure to reflect her meaning, repetition and fragmentation and enjambment all beautifully used. It's easy to recommend this collection.

Thanks to NetGalley for this eARC!

So, my first experience with Tiana's work was when I was a student of hers a couple of years ago. I was mesmerized by her work then and am still in awe of it now. She has a way to dig deep into the topics she writes and brings you well into that depth; you feel everything when you read each of her poems. I can't recommend this poetry book enough.

happy pub day to this absolute beauty!

i’m incredibly, embarrassingly, picky when it comes to poetry. i adore poetry, but only when it truly strikes me at my core and silences my mind, overtaking anything else going on up there (not much, usually).

this collection was breathtaking, full stop. poems about bodies—what it means to live in a body. a Black body. a queer body. a female body. to live in a body that respect is not outright given to, a body that doesn’t always receive respect from it’s inhabitant. to love your body, to love the emotions and feelings that spring from being alive in a body. clark’s writing is both soft & sensitive while full of absolute strength. it encapsulated me from the first page, which i was not prepared for.

tl;dr: tiana clark, you’ve been added to the list of authors whose grocery lists i would read in a heartbeat

(thanks to the publisher and netgalley for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review!)

“I think it all takes courage: falling in love, staying in love, leaving love that no longer serves you, loving yourself—”

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! This book will be released in the US on March 4th, 2025 by Atria.

Full Rating: 4.5 stars rounded up

Tianna Clark’s Scorched Earth is a searing, unflinching excavation of selfhood, grief, and joy in the wake of loss. With lyricism that feels both urgent and tender, these poems navigate the dissolution of a marriage, the weight of societal expectations, and the slow, aching process of unbecoming—of shedding the roles that no longer serve and stepping, fully and unapologetically, into one’s own body. Clark does not merely mourn the end of a relationship; she interrogates it, complicates it, holds it up to the light and watches it refract into something both devastating and liberating.

The speaker wrestles with the dissonance of knowing that leaving is right but not painless. She traces the ways she once shrank inside her marriage, learning instead to take up space—to let her body and her desires expand without shame. Divorce here is not framed as failure but as survival, a radical act of self-reclamation. Throughout, Clark leans into the messy, the unspoken, the things that linger beneath the surface: the father she never met, the ghosts that live in absence, the queerness once hidden, now unearthed.

Clark’s language is electric, at times jagged with longing, at times lush and expansive, allowing her emotions to unfurl across the page. Repetition becomes a pulse, a heartbeat, a refusal to be silenced. Fragmented lines mirror the fragmentation of self, while rich, unexpected metaphors—like a knife pulling out of a cake, leaving residue—capture the tactile, lingering nature of grief and transformation. In Scorched Earth, even pain is not static; it moves, evolves, makes way for something new.

One of the collection’s standout pieces, My Therapist Wants to Know About My Relationship to Work, captures the exhaustion of performing for a world that demands constant output, especially in the aftermath of personal rupture. Clark’s reflections on labor, capitalism, and self-worth deepen the collection’s emotional landscape, underscoring the ways external pressures shape (and distort) our inner lives.

And yet, for all the book’s devastation, Clark insists on joy—not as an inevitability, but as a choice, a risk, an act of defiance. “I still want joy at the end,” she repeats, as if willing it into existence. Scorched Earth is a collection about burning it all down, yes, but also about what survives the fire: desire, tenderness, self-love. It is a book that lingers, that demands to be read and reread, that holds space for anyone learning to emerge from the wreckage of almost-happy into something truer, freer, fully their own.

📖 Read this if you love: meditations on divorce as self-reclamation, the unapologetic embrace of queerness and desire, The Carrying by Ada Limón.

🔑 Key Themes: Grief and Rebirth, Queerness and Desire, Taking Up Space, Divorce as Transformation, Joy as Resistance.

Content / Warnings: Self Harm (minor), Suicidal Thoughts (minor), Sexual Content (minor), Slavery (minor), Rape (minor), Pandemic (minor), Racial Slurs (minor).