Kirjahaku

If you like banging your head against the wall, shifting your definitions of love and art, setting your yearning to music, or going a little bonkers, then Halberd Books is for you. The longest, most ambitious poetry volume from David M. Briggs yet, Halberd Books vol. 3 presents one hundred never-before-compiled poems about breaking down daily, suffering desperate infatuation, clawing out a home, facing down injustice, scratching down stories, and finding safety in spite of it all. Profane, humane, and slightly deranged, Halberd Books vol. 3 is an impassioned howl of a book.

If you like banging your head against the wall, shifting your definitions of love and art, setting your yearning to music, or going a little bonkers, then Halberd Books is for you. The longest, most ambitious poetry volume from David M. Briggs yet, Halberd Books vol. 3 presents one hundred never-before-compiled poems about breaking down daily, suffering desperate infatuation, clawing out a home, facing down injustice, scratching down stories, and finding safety in spite of it all. Profane, humane, and slightly deranged, Halberd Books vol. 3 is an impassioned howl of a book.

In 2023, David M. Briggs collected five years' worth of poetry chapbooks into one full-length collection, the first volume of Halberd Books. Now, just under a year later, five new chapbooks are collected in Halberd Books volume 2. Archive features four short fiction pieces and a poem about the ways that we love and the stories that shape us. Echolalia travels through twenty poems about stress and sadness and surviving through it all. Unserious is a twenty-four poem statement about believing in beauty and finding the fun in life. Miscreants is a short little twelve-poem meditation on the joys and frustrations of cat ownership. Reflections finishes out the volume with twenty poems about love and love poems (which are not the same thing). Over the course of seventy-eight poems and four stories, Halberd Books vol. 2 changes the way the author talks about life, about love, and about what it takes to get through each year.

If you like banging your head against the wall, shifting your definitions of love and art, setting your yearning to music, or going a little bonkers, then Halberd Books is for you. Thematically varied but lyrically secure, Halberd Books vol. 2 combines four new poetry chapbooks with the very first prose fiction chapbook from David M. Briggs. Moods range from helpless grief to bouncing joy, but all throughout runs the rhythmic intensity that has always drawn audiences in.

...These cats These cats These awful cats These sweet and perfect little cats... 12 little poems about the frustrations and jubilations of cat ownership.

...record what makes your mind and heart race... 24 poems about believing in beauty and finding the fun.

...that song of dark and perfect shadow that will give rise to deep blood-blue morning... 20 poems about love and love poems (which are not exactly the same thing).

...eroded and etched you've no words of your own... 20 poems about stress and sadness and surviving through it all.

...If I couldn't stare at you, I could at least stare at the words you loved... 4 fiction pieces about the ways that we love and the stories that shape us.

In 2018, David M. Briggs uploaded two poetry chapbooks to a digital book-sharing service. Over the next five years, these short collections would receive print editions alongside four other chapbooks. Compiling fifteen years' worth of poetry, Halberd Books vol. 1 presents half a lifetime of honing craft, polishing work, and fighting tooth and nail to belong.

16 new and selected poems about giving up, losing hope, finding beauty, picking each other up, dreaming of better things, and finding the will to go on in spite of, well, everything.

In his first short chapbook, Wisconsin writer David M. Briggs collects eight poems about love and music, tackling missteps with relationships by reflecting on identity, abuse, and one's place in the lives of others. There weaves throughout a conversation between an "I" and a "you", a call and response of shifting sounds and styles. And much like the writing within, some may think this description already contains a few too many words. Rated PG-13 or T for some language and thematic elements.