"Grand Marronage is a remarkable book, resolved to regard the difficulties and beauties of the past and present, to acknowledge the forces that would seek to control how both are seen, and to find the strength of its own steady gaze. These poems have a wild and courageous openness, full of intelligence and heart. The poet records "the dual wishes for her children to / write their own and to remember / the names of every ancestor before." Grand Marronage makes a space where those wishes can breathe and grow." —Heather Christle
"Irène Mathieu brings us a vision across generations of black womanhood, one that crosses ocean, myth and language. This is a solemn, sweet bite of poetry that reminds us how the past is only a skin away from our present." —Tyehimba Jess
"Grand marronage—the practice of enslaved folks running away and creating their own communities—is a tradition of freedom-making. Mathieu taps into this tradition, highlighting the creativity and resilience found within her family history. Grand Marronage tells a story that cannot be found in history books. It is the story of Louisiana—and America—that lives in bodies, bones, and the earth. The images she creates will stay with me." —LaKisha Michelle Simmons
"In Irène Mathieu’s Grand Marronage her poems dig beneath the surface of gender, culture, and memory to create a complex multi-layered collection driven by a nuanced cultural lens that is rarely found in contemporary poetry. With poems both visceral and ethereal Grand Marronage attempts its own kind of freedom by highlighting the black body in a localized history and space of intimacy. These are poems that never forget the contexts of human experience and pull us deeper into our understanding of who we are today and how we came to be." —Matthew Shenoda
Dr. Irène P. Mathieu is a pediatrician, writer, and public health researcher. She is the author of orogeny (Trembling Pillow Press, 2017), which won the Bob Kaufman Book Prize, and the galaxy of origins (dancing girl press, 2014). Her honors include Yemassee Journal’s Poetry Prize, Honorable Mention and Editor’s Choice awards in the Sandy Crimmins National Poetry contest, and runner-up for the Northwestern/Cave Canem book prize. Her poems have appeared in Narrative Magazine, Boston Review, Southern Humanities Review, Los Angeles Review, Callaloo, New Delta Review, Foundry, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. Irène serves as a poetry book reviewer for Muzzle Magazine and an editor for the Journal of General Internal Medicine’s humanities section. She holds a BA in International Relations from the College of William & Mary and a MD from Vanderbilt University, and has received fellowships from the Fulbright Program and Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. She is represented by Jack Jones Literary Arts.