“Richard Georges writes within a tradition that is identifiably Caribbean, yet in the nuances, the silences, and the insistent lyric pulse of these exquisitely made poems, we hear not only the sea swept cadences of the islands but something rarer—a singularity of vision that re-centers the Caribbean and its bright, chaotic sensorium as the engine of a distinct poetics that situates the region not as backdrop but as a dynamic, generative center of contemporary lyric practice. These are tender, unflinching, and daring poems, expanding outward toward brightness, a kind of conjuring in which memory, place, and grief remain fiercely alive.”
—Anthony Joseph, author of Haunting the Black Air

“In Shore/Lines, Richard Georges writes as if the sea itself remembers. His poems move through grief, history, and longing like waves against an island shore wearing down what hurts, returning what was lost, and reminding us that even broken places continue to sing. A triumph.”
—Caleb Femi, author of The Wickedest

“In Shore/Lines, Richard Georges’s sumptuous fourth collection, the poet attunes his ear to the echoes of the British Virgin Islands, to recover what has been lost and give a voice to what refuses to be forgotten. The landscape thrums as a living archive, replete with ‘silent warnings written in the ground,’ an ocean that roars, birds driven by ‘brash hunger,’ and hurricanes that herald ruin, but perhaps no more so than people, at times: ‘there are ways the body must be a blade.’ Through poems that reestablish that vital connection between the human and the nonhuman, Georges captures the Caribbean’s startling beauty, complex nostalgia, and fragile hope. But where hope is sometimes splintered—by the consequences of climate change and the aftereffects of imperialism—it remains intact through tentative connections to lovers, elders, neighbors, workers, and relatives. This is a poet of earthy wisdom and keen sensitivity, reminding us that truly the only way to live is ‘to use the sun / to measure the distance // to your body from mine.’”
—Isabelle Baafi, author of Chaotic Good