Description

Fencelines

by Angela Hansen

Angela Hansen’s Fencelines, written during a time of deep hurt, explores how she found healing in the countryside surrounding her Nebraska acreage. Her imagery captures the strength and tenacity of the prairie and how it affects her own soul. Grounded in the passing of the seasons, both physically and mentally, these poems chronicle her journey along, over, and around the fencelines of the past decade.

About the Author

Angela Hansen was born and raised in the farmland of northeast Nebraska. She spent her childhood immersed in family and everything outside: the grove of trees, the crooked bridge down by the creek, and the surrounding countryside. Angela attended country school through 8th grade, graduated from Wayne High School, and received a bachelor’s degree in English Writing from Wayne State College. Her dream of writing and illustrating children’s books was overcome with the practicality of working steady jobs, which over the years included librarian, assistant manager of a bookstore, baker at a college coffee shop, paraoptometric, paraprofessional at an elementary school, and presently, running her own business as a house painter. 

Angela lived in St. Louis, MO, and LaGrange Park, IL, before moving back to Nebraska. She bought an acreage outside Carroll, where she lives with her three children, four goats, and a Ridgeback mix puppy. She enjoys baking, woodworking, gardening, creating, and finding just the right word. Her poetry has been published in Nebraska Life Magazine and shared at a few readings over the years.

Angela considers her faith in God the only reason she survived over 16 years of domestic violence and why she continues to heal, to find beauty in the world, and joy in her farmer and their kids.

Early Praise for Fencelines:

Stimulating and graceful, these poems will create in readers imagined visions based on the author’s vivid descriptions of life and beauty overlooked by most others. Fencelines is a big-hearted treasure for any enthusiast of poetic words.

—Alan J. Bartels, former editor, Nebraska Life Magazine 

Like William Stafford did for the Kansas fields, Angela Hansen has taken the Nebraska countryside and helped us see the magic and meaning that is imbued therein.”

—Susan McDowall, English instructor Central Community College, Grand Island, NE

Fencelines is a body of work encapsulating Hansen’s personal journey of self-preservation and growth, “where all the Nebraska seasons meet for coffee and gossip.” Hansen exhibits the resilience of womanhood among the prairie. Her poems read like Polaroids; she carries her readers through colorful snapshots of her personal love, loss, pain, and acceptance, all nestled between vivid, organic imagery of an unforgiving, yet fruitful countryside existence. Every poem in Hansen’s collection embodies cathartic release.

—Sharon Nicole Carr, Adult Services librarian, Wayne Public Library