Ten Bridges I've Burnt

A Memoir in Verse

By: Brontez Purnell

Narrated by: Brontez Purnell

In Ten Bridges I've Burnt, Brontez Purnell—the bard of the underloved and overlooked—turns his gaze inward. A storyteller with a musical eye for the absurdity of his own existence, he is peerless in his ability to find the levity within the stormiest of crises. Here, in his first collection of genre-defying verse, Purnell reflects on his peripatetic life, whose ups and downs have nothing on the turmoil within. "The most high-risk homosexual behavior I engage in," Purnell writes, "is simply existing."

The thirty-eight autobiographical pieces pulsing in Ten Bridges I've Burnt find Purnell at his no-holds-barred best. He remembers a vicious brawl he participated in at a poetry conference and reckons with packaging his trauma for TV writers' rooms; wrestles with the curses, and gifts, passed down from generations of family members; and chronicles, with breathless verve, a list of hell-raising misadventures and sexcapades. Through it all, he muses on everything from love and loneliness to capitalism and Blackness to jogging and the ethics of art, always with unpredictable clarity and movement.

With the same balance of wit and wisdom that made 100 Boyfriends a sensation, Purnell unleashes another collection of boundary-pushing writing with Ten Bridges I've Burnt, a book as original and thrilling as the author himself.

©2024 Brontez Purnell (P)2024 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Direct, No B.S.

I loved this book. I saw Brontez tell bawdy stories at a story slam a decade ago, read his prose books, and am impressed with how far he has come. His verse is direct with no B.S. It is both entertaining and enlightening. I highly recommend his latest achievement.

This work, this project these poems this poet 🫶

After first listen I am simultaneously electrified and completely stunned. As if was about to witness an eclipse of major disaster or god only knows. I don’t yet have the language to leave a fuller review because these words, these poems, this poet, is remarkable. Starting my second listen at this very moment. I think it’s gonna be on heavy rotation in my ears. Just listen.