is a poet of love and loss, of myth and memory, who turns queer life—its eros, grief, and joy—into scripture for survival. His work moves seamlessly between the confessional and the mythic, blending the intimacy of whispered secrets with the sweep of scripture and ritual. Across six collections of poetry, he has written through queer adolescence, the elegy of a father’s and brother’s deaths, the radical intimacy of marriage, and the fractured landscape of American politics.

His voice is marked by urgency and honesty, never shying from tenderness or ferocity. Through biblical allusion, Southern Gothic detail, and raw eroticism, Borland reimagines both the personal and political as sites of queer survival. Crows, rivers, marriage beds, American highways, and family heirlooms recur as touchstones in his lyric landscape.

To read Bryan Borland is to enter a house where every room is alive with intimacy: the kitchen table with his husband and fellow poet Seth Pennington, a motel room haunted by a teenage crush, a living room where grief lingers in his father’s chair, a desert blooming with erotic play, or a childhood bedroom where he still knocks on the wall he once shared with his brother. What unites his body of work is a radical belief in poetry’s power—to heal, to disrupt, to remember, and above all, to love.