this book will not save you
no, really. it won't.
my bookstack series started to promote some of my older titles, but it’s been cool as hell that for the last two months, i’ve had real-time releases to talk about. this time around it’s this book will not save you, a full-length poetry collection about alcoholism, BPD, institutionalization, and queerness, and also a lot of other things, to be fair.
the title this book will not save you has been rattling around my brain for years now. at one point, i thought it would be the title of my MFA thesis (before i knew how much my work would change during my time in the program). but i always knew it was meant for a collection that reconnected the threads of sex, love, intimacy, anxiety, and trauma—work i arguably began with eventually i will learn to stop saying sorry, my undergraduate thesis.
through poetry, i explore the experience of being partially hospitalized for three weeks in 2021, shortly before i started grad school. i also reflect on what brought me to that point: undiagnosed, untreated borderline personality disorder and rampant alcoholism. the book ends on a hopeful (and very queer) note, with poems discussing the solace i found in coming out. it’s not a light read, but it’s a very important one to me.
praise
Filled with mourning and grief but carved through with hope, this book will not save you is a multifaceted exploration of identity, past identities, and meditation on what the present identity might grow to become. raum scapes with cutting language, a reminder that we are all in a perpetual, fluid state of morphing forms and how those precise transmutations, the performance of just being, coexist or battle with those around us.
—Emily Perkovich, EIC Querencia Press, author of baby, sweetheart, honey
this book will not save you by nat raum is a pivotal collection that will peel the layers of your skin and your pain back until you are raw. raum delivers gut punch blows about the reality of bpd, of forcing oneself to be “woman,” and of desperately seeking to blend when we were never meant to. this book will not save you is a masterclass in lyricism that can be derived from trying to escape the darkness that will always trail just behind you. Here, raum screams defiance in a world where complacency is expected. this book will not save you is a beautiful, tenacious must-read for anyone looking to feel understood or to feel anything at all.
—Sadee Bee, author of Between the Cosmos, the Earth, and I + Viscera
selected works
you can find selected pieces from this book published in the following places:
“in which you are the world’s oyster” in Voicemail Poems
“mississippi river or delaware bay” in Stone of Madness Press
“evil’s soft first touches” in Graphic Violence Lit
“heaven-spent” in JAKE
“fraise sauvage” in Corporeal Lit
“my body’s looking wrong” and “riverdoll” in Corporeal Lit
“hospital mashed potatoes” in body fluids
“mine is not an approachable reality” in Graphic Violence Lit
“this is not what they mean by ‘copywriting with emotion’” in Overheard Lit
“bleuet” on the fifth wheel press blog
this zine will not save you with Black Stone / White Stone
"praise you" and "prose poem with hard edges" in Broadkill Review
“pantoum for not drinking at home” in JAKE
this book will not save you can be purchased from dogleech books in print or digital format.