The Call Home

by Susan Johnson

Scheduled Release Date: Apr 15, 2023

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Finalist of The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize, 2022

The Call Home invites the reader to accompany the poet in natural world settings—lying alongside a caterpillar outside her childhood home on a military base in North Carolina, listening for the silence of salty tides of the Rappahannock River at her parents’ final home in Virginia, discovering salmon nests in the Cle Elum River near her home in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State. Grounded in these settings, this collections bind five generations of women, revealing an undeniable rhythm of love and suffering, a persistent pulse as they share and bear witness to patterns of beauty, connection, tragedy, loss, and continuity. These poems resonate with the tender relationships among members of all communities, all listening for the call home.

“Susan Johnson’s poems call us home in the best of ways, back to our rightful place in the natural world, back to the simple hopes and joys of life, like planting new carrots/ in the garden, one tiny/ seed at a time. With the wisdom of a sage, she crafts poems that showcase the saving grace of small moments, how they can redeem even our darkest hours, teaching us that an unguarded heart/ is the only way.”

—James Crews, author
of Kindness Will Save the World: Stories of Compassion & Connection

 

Why Do We Look Up?

by Kazimieras Campe

Scheduled Release Date: Apr 15, 2023

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In Why Do We Look Up?  Kazimieras Campe explores the multiple views of the relationship between humanity and the universe. By universe, he takes a liberal stance, conjoining the micro and macro features of what surrounds us. The poems tend to be short, posing the challenge of capturing the vast expanse of time, space, and life as we know it. His musings range widely, from elusive sub-atomic particles to the seemingly endless cosmos. His intent is not to provide answers to questions raised in the poems. Rather, it is his hope that we may stop and think, especially whenever we look up.

“Kazimieras Campe’s poems let us smile with delight as we travel through the universe. We go from  the Big Bang, to black holes, that are to be forgiven for they know not what they do. Then, just when you think you know where you are, you’re at Olduvai Gorge where we ventured to walk, and, sometimes, to think. These poems proudly claim an enjoyable dry wit.”

—Mary Sesso, author of The Open Window

 

Signs

by Emily Newberry

Scheduled Release Date: Mar 15, 2023

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Oregon Poet Shows Us the Signs Toward Our Truth

“Imagine a conversation with your kindest, wisest friend, and you have Emily Newberry’s beautiful new book Signs. Full of wry wit and experience, these poems move with courageous delight from sand dune to mountain, and from birth to death—with time-travel wonderfully in between. “Write if you can,” Newberry skillfully advises, “on silk paper with soft lead/ the harsh sounds of your fears.” And in “Fetch,” she cannily asks us, “Will you miss/ everything/ but your own funeral?” Put this truth-telling book in your pocket or bag; you will want to keep these poems close.”

—Annie Lighthart, author of Pax

“Compelling, elegant, and remarkably honest, Signs paints an intimate portrait of identity and the ever-present need for empathy…”

—John Sibley Williams, author of The Drowning House

 

In Transit

by Teddy Norris

Scheduled Release Date: Mar 15, 2023

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Exploring Life’s Transitions with a Missouri Poet

“The poems in this collection by Teddy Norris transport us with powerful imagery and emotive rhythm as we cross a continent of life experiences through intimate moments of connection. Whether with inner longing or loss, disturbing events, or the slow, silent death of a bee, Norris puts the reader ‘there,’ as one living and acutely attuned to the story. She keeps us in transit throughout this beautiful collection of straight-from-life poems while inviting us to pause momentarily to revisit or consider what we can all identify as the reality of living in our chaotic world. Through her fresh eyes we are gifted with a richness of seeing and provided with thought-provoking insights.”

—Jan Groenemann, author of Woman Alone
and Creativity as a Life Path

 

A Starved Heart

by Genevieve Lardizabal

Scheduled Release Date: Mar 15, 2023

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Powerful Collection from a Brave Seattle Poet

She was isolated and alone. At one point, no other patients were allowed to speak to her, and she wasn’t allowed outside for five months. So many thoughts swirled in her head and without any output she felt trapped, so she began to write, and spent the next three years writing her book. A Starved Heart dives deep into the author’s eating disorders and mental anguish, sharing her experiences enduring four years of treatment centers and hospital stays that finally lead her to recovery.

“Beautifully poignant, vulnerable, and real. Genevieve is an extraordinary writer who breathes life into every word. With vivid detail she brings you through her journey, the dark night of her soul, and into the light of her true self. A powerful must read.”

—Nadia Ahrens, LICSW, Psychotherapist

 

Tracking the Fox

by Rosalie Sanara Petrouske

Scheduled Release Date: Feb 1, 2023

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1st Place Winner The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2022

“The poems in Tracking the Fox unfold at the slow pace of a hike in the woods, inviting the pleasures and joys of nature, while never turning away from the shared struggles and pain of the poet’s Ojibwe heritage. Hers is a fearless language that holds it all, like the black ash basket she weaves with her daughter, welcoming every reader with each personal, conversational, and precise poem. This is an ambitious, necessary voice committed to truth-telling and the naming of creatures, large and small, that make up our world. In ‘The Sky I Was Born Under,’ written in homage to U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s piece of the same name, she describes the scene of her own birth, ending with the lines: ‘I wailed for the first time, my voice/ ricocheted in the stillness,/ and all the forest creatures paused to listen.’ Tracking the Fox will cause us all to pause and listen to the hard-won work of this poet coming into her own as a Native American woman and mother, promising: ‘we shall let our voices be heard.’”

—James Crews, contest judge, poet, editor of How to Love the World

 

Elemental Things

by Michael S. Glaser

Scheduled Release Date: Feb 1, 2023

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2nd Place Winner
The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2022

“These poems return us to the sacred in our everyday lives, calling us back to the language of awe, as the poet puts it so gorgeously in the opening poem. These poems feel both elemental and essential themselves, capturing so many holy moments in nature, inviting us into the solitude and presence from which absorbing poetry is born.”

—James Crews, contest judge, poet, editor of How to Love the World