Winner of the 2021 Gold Line Press Poetry Chapbook Contest, 2023 Florida Book Awards Recipient

“Asa Drake’s incisive debut chapbook, One Way to Listen, carves through simplistic narratives, filling in the new space with “nests of small animals,” surreal details that promote curiosity and “room for uncertainty.” Operating with furious imagination, these poems return to interlocking loves: of family, place, and self—love especially in resistance to rising violence that this speaker, a Filipina American woman, is positioned to live in acute awareness of. Through such tenderness, Drake opens vital questions about relation and grief. In response to the 2021 Atlanta spa shooting, Drake’s speaker asks what outfit is appropriate to wear after a loss “no one will recognize.” These poems demand recognition. They process aggressions through layered metaphor. As she lays clothed in snakes who shut their mouths to keep warm, the speaker identifies the risks, always, of being a speaker. Of letting in the cold. A brilliant emerging writer, Asa Drake’s debut collection is urgent and unforgettable.” —Taneum Bambrick, author or Vantage and Intimacies, Received