Important Update about Minnie Bruce Pratt’s Health
7/2/2023 It is with the deepest sorrow that we report the passing of Minnie Bruce Pratt on Sunday, July 2nd, 2023. She was cared for until the end by a circle of friends and family that made her feel the utmost care and comfort. We are incredibly grateful for their support and deep love for Minnie Bruce.
Moreover, we are thankful for Minnie Bruce’s wider circle of friends, colleagues, activists, and readers who were able to send her messages over the last few weeks. Your sentiments were deeply appreciated. Thank you all.
A public celebration of Minnie Bruce’s life will take place in the near future. Details will be posted here on her website and on her other social media.
Donations in memory of Minnie Bruce may be made to the Friends of Dorothy House in Syracuse, NY. If you would like to donate, go here: https://alternative-efforts-ctr-of-cny-inc-friends-of-dorothy.square.site
Take care, and we will continue to be in touch,
Ben and Ransom
6/22/2023: This is Ben and Ransom Weaver, Minnie Bruce’s sons, and it is with great sadness that we must report that very recently Minnie Bruce was diagnosed with a severe health problem. Currently, she is receiving palliative care from a team of friends and family and resting as comfortably as we can make her. Unfortunately, her illness has had a significant impact on her cognition and, thus, on her ability to communicate. Nevertheless, if you would like to send a message of support to Minnie Bruce you may do so AT THIS LINK. Her caregivers will do their best to pass these on to her.
Updates regarding Minnie Bruce’s health will be posted here when there is more to report about her condition.
Finally, if you have any other pressing matters concerning Minnie Bruce that need immediate attention, please contact Ben Weaver at ben1969@me.com and we will do our best to address them.
Take care and be well,
Ben and Ransom
6/27/2023: Sadly, we write to inform you that Minnie Bruce, as expected, continues to decline, although she also continues to be made as comfortable as possible — she is free of pain and surrounded by loving friends and family.
To those of you who have sent messages to Minnie Bruce, thank you. Her caregivers have been able to pass these on to her, either directly for her to read herself or reading them to her aloud if that help was needed. Your thoughts and sentiments are part of the love and comfort that surrounds her now, so, again, thank you.
We will, of course, continue to pass on any new messages of support to Minnie Bruce, and you may submit those AT THIS LINK.
Take care, and we will continue to be in touch,
Ben and Ransom
POET ACTIVIST LGBTQ+ ANTI-RACIST ANTI-IMPERIALIST
Welcome
Come in and make yourself at home. If we haven’t met before, then the first thing you should know about me is my name. I go by Minnie Bruce—it’s a double-first-name, just like Fannie Lou or Ana María—so do call me by both—“Minnie Bruce.” I hope you enjoy all the connections here to art, politics, love and life. Browse my writing, find out about political struggles, and meet my beloved Leslie Feinberg, trans writer and activist.
Come back soon and visit often! I look forward to meeting you down the road–at a poetry reading, a Pride Rally, or the next street demonstration for justice and liberation.
“I knew you, you knew me. We looked at each other,
shining on each other. Shining-on sun. Sailing-on moon. ”
– from MAGNIFIED
MAGNIFIED by Minnie Bruce Pratt
This collection of love poems draws us into the sacred liminal space that surrounds death. With her beloved gravely ill, poet and activist Minnie Bruce Pratt turns to daily walks and writing to find a way to go on in a world where injustice brings so much loss and death. She chronicles the quiet rooms of “pain and the body’s memory,” bringing the reader carefully into moments that will be familiar to anyone who has suffered similar loss. Even as she asks, “What’s the use of poetry? Not one word comes back to talk me out of pain,” the book delivers a vision of love that is boldly political and laced with a tumultuous hope that promises: “Revolution is bigger than both of us, revolution is a science that infers the future presence of us.” This poetry is testimony to the generative power of love that continues after death.
Published by Wesleyan University Press
Available at HFS Books
at Charis Books
& More.
VIDEO: Minnie Bruce Pratt reads from her new poetry MAGNIFIED for the Sinister Wisdom community. Board member Rose Norman introduces. SW editor and publisher Julie R. Enszer talks life and poetry with Pratt. At Sinister Wisdom.
PODCAST: A Triumph:Higher Ground Society. Dr. Minnie-Bruce Pratt has a down-home conversation with Jerald Crook of Higher Ground (Mar 16, 2021).
INTERVIEW: “Labor of Love and Loss:Minnie Bruce Pratt on the Occasion of Magnified, Her Latest Poetry. At Autostraddle
“Once in a blue moon a love like this comes along.”
– from MAGNIFIED
FROM MAGNIFIED
forthcoming Spring 2021, from the Wesleyan Poetry Series
Sleeve
I lie in the dark, listening to a pulse of sound,
letters in an unknown alphabet spelling out words
hat come and go through a sorrowful labyrinth.
And out of the corner of my eye, I glimpse you
passing down the dim-lit hallway, the edge of you.
Your sleeve, perhaps.