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

 

Listening in the Dark

by Suzy Harris

Scheduled Release Date: Feb 1, 2023

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3rd Place Winner The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2022

“I have seldom encountered a series of poems so closely linked and connected as a whole. This chapbook tenderly addresses the poet’s lifelong hearing loss with a surprising precision of language, starting at the very beginning of life and reimagining that time of growing up with two languages,/ one that is silence. No doubt these tender poems will help many readers to feel less alone as they navigate their own worlds of memory, loss, and resilience.”

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

 

The Round Whisper of No Moon

by Peter Kaufmann

Scheduled Release Date: Nov 15, 2022

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“In a world of next, next, next, Kaufmann’s poems strike the resonant NOW gong. The Round Whisper of No Moon is a riveting book to keep close by, on your shrine.”

—Naomi Shihab Nye, Young People’s Poet Laureate, The Poetry Foundation

The Round Whisper of No Moon weaves imagery and story gathered over twenty years of migrating between the wilds of Alaska and densely populated cities in Southeast Asia. Peter Kaufmann’s poems travel between cultures and communities, the natural world, and stories of people in the margins of society. They draw from a life of both deep connections to place and one that is constantly uprooted, stitching together themes of migration, home, love, longing and belonging.

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What if we could learn to say what we feel? These poems show us how. What if real courage is going to the tender place, and claiming your right to be there? This book takes you to that heaven. Poem after poem invests complete trust in the power of images to tell the heart’s most intimate desire. Alaska, California, Viet Nam, Cambodia—and curiosity, kinship, grief—are all home if you are one who can see. Put this book inside you, and then practice what it teaches: say what you love and long for. Don’t delay.

—Kim Stafford, Oregon Poet Laureate (2018-2020), author of Singer Come from Afar