Derrick Austin's highly-anticipated poetry collection Trouble the Water has been in the recent spotlight, garnering a rave review from Publishers Weekly, as well as a Booklist starred review.

According to PW: "Austin maintains that fraught balancing act of being lighthearted, even convivial, in the face of worry and distress. He also deftly manipulates the tension between beauty and artlessness, sensitivity and violence.

"This collection is well-suited to readers prepared interrogate what they love and what they distrust. In Austin’s hands, the exquisite can be ominous while the grotesque can turn charming, and his poems wisely assert that the world is unforgiving and yet full of mercy—that one can question beauty and yet still be beholden to it."

Calling the collection a "remarkable debut" the Booklist starred review says: "'San Souci' epitomizes the sophistication of form and thought in Austin’s poetry by using an effect resembling Versailles' Hall of Mirrors as the poem’s speaker reflects on paintings, how they reflect life, his body, his lover’s body, how he can see his lover as a painting or see the act of pleasuring another artfully reflected back to him. Whether encountering European catacombs or the Gulf Coast’s post-oil-spill devastation, all of Austin’s lyrical poems are poignant and empowered."

Click here to read the entire Publishers Weekly review.

Trouble the Water is a recent winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, and is available for pre-order at the BOA Bookstore.