Amazon TheMoxieBee Powell's Books Category:  Poetry Publisher: Paper Boat Press ISBN-10:  096425113 Type: Non-Fiction Pages: 40 Copyright: October 1995 Poems from Maura Alia Badji (Bramkamp) tracing journey from surviving abuse & incest with spirit intact--thriving, rather than just surviving. Poems from Maura Alia Badji (Bramkamp), graduate of Universityof WA 's MFA in Creative Writing (1998),  and former resident of Olympic Peninsula and Seattle.  Excerpt Resculpting I can give myself a mouth, put my language in it. I can free my throat, sing and shout, Breathe! I can open my eyes this time. No, it's not just my perception. I can burst the infection that has fed on my heart, apply a healing balm. I can raze the wall that guards my middle, let some feeling in. I can sprout back my arms and legs. Yes, it's time to dance. I can sway my hips again, reclaim my sex, my sass. I can feel my strong feet on the solid ground and know I'm all here at last.

Splitting Open
A long time ago when Muriel Rukeyser said the world would split open if one woman told the truth about her life, this is the poetry she had in mind.
---Frances Mayes, author (Under the Tuscan Sun; The Discovery of Poetry )

The Healing Power of Poetry
In one of her poems, Maura Bramkamp writes 'We had long learned the truth. There is no crime/ if there is no proof.' But Maura's strong courageous poetic voice IS proof, proof that she is a survivor and that the power of poetry can heal us."

--Jana Harris, author, (Oh How Can I Keep On Singing? : Voices of Pioneer Women, The Pearl of Ruby City, and Manhattan As A Second Language, etc)



Soul Sister
In Maura Alia Bramkamp's poetry I find a true soul sister, a woman who has journeyed to the dark heart of her pain, then kept on going till she came out the other side into a sunlit place of determination, joy, and spiritual renewal."

--Margot Silk Forrest editor, The Healing Woman, author, artisa, shoe designer)