Poetry Books

THE DOGWOOD VERSES: A Poetry Chapbook, Selected Writings 2011-2021

Publication Date: August 31, 2021
Format: Paperback
Pages: 587
ISBN-13: 979-8468498743
Foreword by: Yaishal Aslam

For ten years, lifelong poet Brennan Kenneth Brown carefully and in secret crafted THE DOGWOOD VERSES. This anthology includes over 300 poems as well as selected prose and essays.

It is comprised of four smaller books written over the past decade:

• The Juvenila (2011 — 2013)
• The Hyacinth Boy (2014 — 2017)
• The Pine Chapter (2018 — 2020)
• The Last Call (2020 — 2021)

An inevitable cocktail of nostalgia, regret and love. These are the long, difficult nights when sentimentality took over any common sense. It is a slow-burn meditation on everything vital, everything that's keeping the author alive.

Holy Waterfall: 16 New & Selected Poems for Mohkínstsis akápiyoyis & the Red River

Publication Date: March 13, 2023
Format: Paperback
Pages: 40
ISBN-13: 979-8386930387
Purchase: Gumroad • Amazon

A chapbook and series of confessional poetry and outsider art exploring Indigenous identity, religious beliefs, traumatic past, family, and love. A poet reckoning with his ancestry and childhood, forming his identity as a young Queer Métis poet. A Gospel of poetry and art, Holy Waterfall works as a reflection, a way to cleanse and renew the spirit.

The Weight of Yr Heart: Love Poetry for Connie Yu

Publication Date: December 17, 2023
Format: Paperback
Pages: 54
ISBN-13: 979-8872139089
Purchase: Gumroad • Amazon

An collection of thirty-seven love poems centered around a transcendental love for Brown's partner, Connie. Examining the tender complexities of relationships through vulnerability. Spare yet resonant verses chart the topography of devotion. Moments of joy, desire, doubt, and comfort.

These love letters are steeped in symbolism, weaving themes of fate and gravity. A melodic, bittersweet ode made all the more poignant for its ephemerality. Love, like butterfly wings, is gossamer yet heavy with meaning.

Your Brothers Keeper: A Love Letter to Dostoevsky

Publication Date: August 3, 2024
Format: Paperback
Pages: 40
ISBN-13: 979-8334888722
Purchase: Gumroad • Amazon

What does a 19th-century Russian novel have to do with today? In "Your Brothers Keeper," a young poet finds an unlikely kindred spirit in Fyodor Dostoevsky. The collection of poems in this chapbook are part love letter, part wrestling match with one of the greatest novels of all time, The Brothers Karamazov.

From the sterile halls of a children's hospice to the snowy streets of St. Petersburg, these poems grapple with faith, doubt, and the messiness of being human. You'll find Queer retellings of Dostoevsky's characters, decolonial perspectives on Russian literature, and quiet moments of grace during suffering.

The Reaper and Her Sickle: Rough Cuts, Spares, Afterthoughts, B-Sides and Experiments

Publication Date: August 11, 2024
Format: Paperback
Pages: 252
ISBN-13: 979-8387237157
Purchase: Gumroad • Amazon

A raw, unfiltered glimpse into the creative process of an emerging poet. This 250-page compendium collects three years of unpublished writings, discarded drafts, and experimental verses from Brown's undergraduate journey at Mount Royal University.

Unlike Brown's previous works, this collection lacks a cohesive theme. Instead, it offers a difficult view of a poet finding his voice. Brown preserves these pieces in their original, unedited form—awkward rhythms, half-formed metaphors, unfinished characters and all. A meditation on the act of writing itself, on first drafts and failures.

Essay Collections

Selected Essays & Prose: Writings, 2011 — 2021

Publication Date: October 20, 2021
Format: Paperback
Pages: 146
ISBN-13: 979-8750233588

For over ten years, Brennan Kenneth Brown has been an avid reader and writer. As an outsider (at the time) of academia and formal writing, and taking influence from Chinese philosophers such as Lin Yutang and his book, The Importance of Living, Brown takes a contemporary lens to the meaningfulness of everyday life, and what it means to be a good person in the 21st century. This book is a personal journey of lifelong learning, sharing resources, creating things, and trying to be better.

PRAIRIE BOYSPIRIT: An NDN Memoir

Publication Date: December 11, 2024
Format: Paperback
Pages: 50
ISBN-13: 979-8303372290
Purchase: Gumroad • Amazon

This series of essays confronts addiction, white-passingness, self-harm, and cultural displacement while burning sage from crystal shops and praying to a God that's equal parts Catholic guilt and Cree cosmology.

In this collection of linked essays, Brown maps the invisible territories where Indigenous and settler identities collide, where ceremony bleeds into survival, and where the wild refuses to be forgotten. Through bizarre-lyric prose cutting as deep as prairie frost, Brown chronicles his journey as a Queer Métis man navigating urban landscapes and ancestral memories.

As Editor/Contributor/Foreword Writer

On the Fringe: A Collection of Filth

Publication Date: March 19, 2024
Format: Paperback
Pages: 100
ISBN-13: 979-8884162167
Author: Danaë Webb
Foreword by: Brennan Kenneth Brown

A daring debut anthology written by Mount Royal University's Write Club. A foray into difficult and untamed territories of human experience. Through murky waters of controversy, On the Fringe explores the boundaries most fear to tread: Sex, death, and crime.

Both shocking and profound, this anthology questions the norms, rejects the banal, and offers a rare glimpse into what lies beneath the surface of politeness and social convention. From musings on chronic illness to vivid depictions of Queer joy, from the grim realities of suffering to riotous celebrations of the political fringe.

On the Fringe: A Collection of Community

Publication Date: April 12, 2025
Format: Paperback
Pages: 267
ISBN-13: 979-8319240255
Author: Felix Da Costa Gomez
Foreword by: Brennan Kenneth Brown
Cover Design by: Mazi Jade

A Collection of Community brings together the voices of Mount Royal University's Write Club in an exploration of tradition, companionship, and vision. This anthology showcases over twenty emerging writers who gathered weekly in a clubhouse to share vulnerable truths and forge a community beyond the ordinary boundaries of academic life.

From poetry on marginalization to intimate reflections on friendship, from experimental fiction to heartfelt personal essays, these pieces invite readers into a space where vulnerability becomes strength.

Elsewhere

• "Indigenous Resilience in Illustration: 'Nimkii' and the Story of Survival"
  Mount Royal University Undergraduate Humanities Review, April 2024
  Analysis of "This Place: 150 Years Retold" anthology, focusing on Indigenous narrative sovereignty and community resilience amidst the Sixties Scoop.

• "The Tao of Bees: How I Use Beeminder"
  Beeminder Blog, September 2017
  Exploration of productivity tools and personal accountability systems, specifically examining Beeminder as a unique approach to goal achievement without shortcuts.

• The Reflector (Mount Royal University student newspaper)
  Various contributions, 2021–2025