Gabrielle Bates’s electric debut collection Judas Goat plumbs the depths of intimate relationships. The book’s eponymous animal is used to lead sheep to slaughter while its own life is spared, and its harrowing existence echoes through this spellbinding collection of forty poems, which wrestle with betrayal and forced obedience, violence and young womanhood, and the “forbidden felt language” of sexual and sacred love. These poems conjure encounters with figures from scriptures, domesticated animals eyeing the wild, and mothering as a shapeshifting, spectral force; they question what it means to love another person and how to exorcise childhood fears. All the while, the Deep South haunts, and no matter how far away the speaker moves, the South always draws her back home.

In confession, in illumination, Bates establishes herself as an unflinching witness to the risks that desire necessitates, as Judas Goat holds readers close and whispers its unforgettable lines.

The Scotsman Poem of the Week October 2025

Prizes

Short-listed for Washington State Book Award 2024 (United States)

Elegant... dazzling... faces grim truths and draws hard lines. —The New York Times Book Review

What resonates... is that desire to experience a fundamental love, even if it’s illusory. —Washington Independent Review of Books

Rich with myth, scripture and childhood memory, these poems were impossible to turn away from. —NPR, "Books We Love: Best Books of 2023"

The debut’s sequences on mourning, mothers, and marriage consider the ways in which encounters with nonhuman animals reveal the deception, purchase, and stakes of human behavior. —The Poetry Foundation

Bates fills her debut with intense imagery and surprising truths... These yearning poems offer intriguing descriptions and insights. —Publishers Weekly

Thrillingly bold. . . . unique in approach, mischievous in its navigation of ideas, and lush yet controlled in its use of language. —Library Journal

Dazzling… Bates’s scintillating lyricism makes it a thrilling and unforgettable read. —Electric Literature, A Best Poetry Collection of 2023

Remarkable... One of America’s most unique voices... Gabrielle Bates is one part rock star, one part bard, offering a debut that perfectly balances an unflinching, badass attitude with the practiced precision of an experienced student of poetics. —The Poetry Question (Podcast)

Gabrielle Bates is the author of Judas Goat (US: Tin House, 2023; UK: the87press, 2025), named a Best Book of 2023 by NPR and Electric Lit and a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, she is currently based in Seattle, where she works for Open Books: A Poem Emporium, co-hosts the podcast The Poet Salon, and serves occasionally as visiting faculty for the University of Washington Rome Center and the Tin House Writers' Workshops. Her poems have been published by the New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, Ploughshares, the Best American Experimental Poetry anthology, and Literature Wales, among other publications. On IG: @gabrielle_bates_. www,gabriellebat.es