The 53 Poem Project, Vol. 1: The First 26 Weeks gathers the first half of David Brickey Bloomer's year-long undertaking: one poem a week, written as craft practice, as witness, and, by his own account, as survival. The poems move between the field and the interior. Some draw on more than two decades of humanitarian work across South and Southeast Asia, the Pacific, and beyond; others turn toward grief, loss, and the slow question of how to begin living again. A novella's worth of voices surfaces in an epistolary sequence on the aid world; a dreamed barroom conversation with a tipsy Bukowski sits near an ode to a cat on his fifteenth birthday. Throughout, black-and-white and colour photographs — some recent, some reaching back years — keep their own counsel beside the poems, asking for the same quality of attention.

David calls himself a tragic optimist: someone who sees the darkest edges clearly and still believes in the possibility of light. This first volume is a record of paying attention through an uncertain year: neither consoling nor despairing, but honest about both.