What if red ran out is the assured first collection from one of Canada's finest young poets. Provocative, funny, and brash, the poems in this collection leap from one surprising image to another, from poignancy to an outlandish, teasing delight. The sheer tonal range of Grubisic's poems is remarkable. They shimmer with playfulness yet deepen into contemplative gravity.
These street-smart poems register the pulse of contemporary commodity culture's off-kilter pacing; "the hyena at the bodega," as she calls it. They peer into back alleys of thought and bring forth our fears. But then, all at once, they race down the street again, laughing, reminding us of all we love and how we might hold onto it.
"Every poem in this book is superb. It is the work of a major Canadian poet at the peak of her powers."
"Here is a poetry of crackling intelligence, pastoral elegance, urban bawdiness, and — in the lines, the language, the sheer glorious stuff — abundance. Grubisic mourns and celebrates all that is tenuous in poems that are vibrantly, almost vehemently, alive. A memorable début from a writer whose voice is, already, unmistakeable."
"Katia Grubisic draws you into her lines like a spider on hyper-spin. I'm talking more than dazzle here: intelligence galore and an inventive streak that's close to bliss. What if red ran out takes the 'warped, melancholy, magnetic' and whirls it into all sorts of jolts and leaps."
"There is a high-minded passion to Katia Grubisic's debut poetry collection."