Golden is the author of
ONCE YOU HAD HANds
A book of poems published by Humanist Press, featuring photographs by Michael Wilson
Once You Had Hands is a fierce and unflinching collection that chronicles a journey through religious deconstruction, family trauma, and the hard-won work of reclaiming one's own voice. Golden's poems confront the inherited narratives of faith, violence, and silence with stunning directness, transforming personal reckoning into universal questions about survival, truth-telling, and what it means to rebuild a life from its fragments.
Interwoven with Golden's original work are reimagined passages from 17th-century metaphysical poet Henry Vaughan, creating a dialogue between historical spiritual longing and contemporary disillusionment. Accompanied by evocative black-and-white photographs by Michael Wilson, the collection explores what happens when we dare to name what has been unnameable - and discover that in breaking our silence, we might also break ourselves open to something truer.
This debut speaks particularly to readers navigating their own spiritual questioning, those drawn to unflinching examinations of trauma and healing, and anyone who has ever found that poetry can say what ordinary language cannot. Golden's work reveals how creative expression becomes both sanctuary and scalpel, offering a path toward what one reviewer called "hard won joy" and the fierce possibility of transformation.
“You want to read these poems, consume them, and rebuild the world because of them”
— Crabfat Magazine
Critical Praise
"stunning language that is delicate and raw"
— Humanist Press
“Tasha Golden's Once You Had Hands is a smart and moving book of poetry. There is a fierce voice here that can make you feel danger without always naming it, and it is indeed a dangerous world that we meet here. Golden has sharp senses and wit in depicting her disappointment and fury at religious promises. There is joy here too, hard won, and quietly compelling.”
— Jennifer Michael Hecht, author of Stay and Doubt: A History
“This book is a feral cry that invents the only form that can contain it…I am at a loss to describe that power. I can only urge you to read it.”
— James Cummins, author of Still Some Cake
“Domestic horrors are twisted into gorgeous sequined structures that in their artifice, their passionate madeness, remind us that purposeful transformation is possible.”
— Catherine Wagner, author of Nervous Device
“One has the feeling that this clear-eyed writer set out to wield poems like glowing lanterns against a tide of darkness and loss, and finding she could not stem the tide, chose instead to illuminate the questions we are all too often afraid to ask. Turns out a writer with a nimble mind and enough courage can make the fearsome questions beautiful.”
— Linford Detweiler, Over the Rhine
“Interspersed with inspired manipulations of poems by the metaphysical Henry Vaughan, and the evocative photos of Michael Wilson, Golden’s work will stay with the reader for a long time.”
— Norman Finkelstein, author of Track