Trace Evidence

In Trace Evidence, the urgent follow-up to his award-winning debut Into Each Room We Enter without Knowing, Charif Shanahan continues his piercing meditations on the intricacies of mixed-race identity, queer desire, time, mortality, and the legacies of anti-Blackness in the US and abroad.

At the collection’s center sits “On the Overnight from Agadir,” a poem that chronicles Shanahan’s survival of a devastating bus accident in Morocco, his mother’s birth country, and ruminates on home, belonging, and the mysteries of fate.

With rich lyricism, power, and tenderness, Trace Evidence centers the racial periphery and excavates the vestiges of our violent colonial past in the most intimate aspects of our lives. In a language yoked equally to the physical and metaphysical worlds, the poet articulates the need we all share for real intimacy and connection, and proves, time and again, that the true cost of our separateness is the love that our survival requires.

"Searing. . . . a stunning meditation on intimacy, time, and our universal need for connection. Electric and urgent, Trace Evidence is about belonging, and how love can help us not only survive, but thrive."

― Chicago Review of Books

"Exquisite and affecting. . . . an artistic vision that is dynamic and brilliantly conveyed."

― Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"Searching. . . . he’s such a great poet, his particular experience resonates with any reader who’s ever wondered, ‘Why are we here?'"

― The Washington Post

"Brilliant. . . . A lyrical voice that’s at once pointed and poised."

― Guernica

"His words are moving and muscular, with each line pulsating with wisely crafted feeling and thought. . . . [Shanahan] shows not just how a person is impacted by race but also how race is shaped by all of us, individually, in every moment."

― Book Page

"Spectacular. . . . By turns wry, philosophical, and cutting, Shanahan lays bare the woes of contemporary America while offering glimpses of embodied joy."

― Buzzfeed

"Monumental. . . . Gorgeous. . . . Expansive. . . . Deeply inquisitive and self-aware, the poems demonstrate a true mastery of form. . . . [and] reckon in surprising and unexpected ways with mixed-race identity, sexual intimacy, and the imbricated legacies of transcontinental colonialism."

― Los Angeles Review of Books

"Emotionally vulnerable and insightful; a work in which all readers likely will find something of themselves."

― Library Journal, Starred Review

"Trace Evidence explores mortality, belonging & race with glaring honesty & technical precision. Its urgency & timeliness make it one of the most important collections of the year. . . . The poems are rich with nuance and often demand that readers return to them, each time gleaning something new. . . . Charif Shanahan is one of the most vital voices in American poetry."

― The Poetry Question

"Piercing meditations on the intricacies of mixed-race identity, queer desire, time, mortality, and the legacies of anti-Blackness in the US and abroad."

― New York Public Library