A virtuosic, formally adept and often deeply affecting memoir-in-verse from a former winner of the prestigious Yale Younger Poet's Prize.

Formally ambidextrous, teethed with wit and uncompromising dignity." – Ocean Vuong

Bread and Circus is a hybrid and palimpsestic memoir-in-verse: it combines poetry, photography and spectral imaging to explore the realities of economic necessity and marginal poverty through a personal lens.

Examining the experience of the US urban Black community from a variety of perspectives, it draws heavily on Airea D. Matthews's archival research on Adam Smith, the eighteenth-century Scottish economist, as well as his magnum opus, The Wealth of Nations.

As the perspective shifts from watchful child, to teacher, mother, writer and citizen, Bread and Circus asks what it is to have survived, indeed to have flourished, and at what cost.

"'Matthews's writing is bold, innovative and complex.'" - Washington Post

"'Matthews is virtuosic, frantic, and darkly, very darkly, funny.'" - New Yorker

"'Discerning and significant'" - Poetry Foundation

"'Unflinching. . . Full of humane wisdom, this powerful volume forces readers to acknowledge systemic inequality.'" - Publishers Weekly

"'Matthews has earned a place in the accomplished company of Adrienne Rich and Muriel Rukeyser.'" - Booklist