A Moment’s Breath

poems by Susan Willis Johnson

A Moment’s Breath considers the questions arising from interwoven threads of the vulnerable rhythms of a marriage, the guidance and death of a father, the hope and loss of a nephew, the persistent reach for justice, the looming risk of wildfire, all sourced in love and loss and grief. These poems return again and again to the contemplative stance of surrender in the absence of answers and the seeking of a peace in the certainty of uncertainty. Following the seasons of the year through the enduring presence of place in the mountains, amid ridges and rivers, firs and pines, they reveal “a moment’s breath on earth” and invite the reader to stillness, even among the questions.

Enjoy a video of Susan reading from her new book:

Early Praise

Reading Susan Willis Johnson’s A Moment’s Breath feels like a much-needed mountain retreat—spacious, reverent, dreamy and nourishing. Equal parts reflection, wonder, and offering, each poem reads like a prayer, feels like an invitation, unfolds like a film. Visually rich and aurally evocative—the sound of her kitchen, of scattered petals, crows and chickadees, the last of the geese, the clip of pliers, grief, wind…. A Moment’s Breath is a deftly crafted collection filled with radiance, hospitality and generosity. What a gift!

—M Freeman, author of The Illuminated Space: A Personal Theory & Contemplative Practice of Media Art

In her second book of poetry, A Moment’s Breath, Susan Willis Johnson walks beside us through her beloved woods and ridges along the waters of the Cle Elum River, sharing with us the quiet, peace, loss, and renewal she discovers there each day. From the collection’s first poem in which she slowly fully open[s] again, to “Sorrow” and the grief of green needles, fallen, on to “Midwinter”’s return to light, spring, and finally “Renewing Our Vows,” she shows us how she listens, sees, and grows just as the woods do, especially after devastating fire. All along these forest paths, her imagery, language, and form flow naturally and beautifully, softening our spirits and pointing to the way of love.

—Karen Gookin, author of The Hills Around Are Dust and Light

These poems are sweet and tender, full of moments of quiet beauty and the joys of living alongside the ache. They are prayers and longings rising from grief and the threat of climate chaos, while seeking solace in the natural world. They invite the reader to join a communion of the vulnerable and find sanctuary among the images.

—Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE, online Abbess of Abbey of the Arts and author of over 25 books including four collections of poetry

About the Author

Susan Willis Johnson writes in the mountain town of Roslyn, Washington. She hikes daily with family and friends on trails along the Cle Elum River Valley. Serving as the spokesperson for a Roslyn grassroots citizens’ group, she collaborated to promote sustainable forestry and to protect wildlife habitat. Susan taught in the local schools and was Co-Director of the Central Washington Writing Project. She was named the 2009 Washington State Teacher of the Year. Her chapbook, The Call Home (The Poetry Box), was a finalist in the 2022 Chapbook Contest.

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The Snow Arrow

Selected Poems by Sharon Black

Sharon Black’s The Snow Arrow: Selected Poems stays with you. Voices of unsettling detachment, breathless obsession, and whimsical celebration take turns in this provocative volume spanning over four decades of the poet’s career. Here, the everyday makes common cause with the absurd and nonsensical—real jockeying with surreal from stanza to stanza, line to line. Black’s poems both comfort and confound. Snow, houses, and the elusive nature of the self are recurring, sometimes disquieting themes.

Enjoy a video of Sharon reading from her new book:

Early Praise

Black’s writing is both tightly disciplined and coyly whimsical. The world of these poems is a convincing one with its share of keen, if sometimes surreal observation. There is a loveliness in The Snow Arrow that, as much as it doesn’t want to, sometimes hurts. At times there is also a sense of something not quite right, something off, not by a lot but by some metric of what it means to be human. These are poems in which you sometimes forget to breathe. In other places they are reminding you to breathe.

—JAMES CARPENTER,  author of Honeyed Words and Bitter

Sharon Black, a Philadelphia area poet who I heard at Slought as part of the new Slought Fellows series, is a disarmingly humble poet whose works are homey and yet, like a home, surrounded by prickly brambles and some surprises inside and out. Black does some wonderful visual conjuring in her works, like in the love poem to her house in which she talks about how the house sits in the grass like a contented cow.

—ROBERTA FALLON, artist, art critic, co-founder of ArtBlog

From the wilds of suburban life, and, once, a career in the city, this poet is a wizard of startling language and stories. She shows us her sacred sauté pan and, the refusal of some onions to properly caramelize, /as if one could be persuaded by those that do. Visit her home where there are invisible handprints everywhere,/ even the floor from push-ups and cartwheels. Share her longing to be a cavernous ship from the last century / sunk on the bottom of the sea, / fish flitting from one appalling room / to the next, each in the most impeccable disorder. Open this debut book, smooth its pages, and prepare to be surprised, challenged, and charmed.

—AMY E. LAUB, author of What Water Says and Household Goods: Poems about Home

About the Author

Sharon Black credits becoming a poet to two girlhood memories from the late 60s. The first was accompanying her physician father on house calls through central Pennsylvania farm country, staring, often bored, out the passenger seat window between patient visits. The second has to do with the long row of empty, gallon-sized glass cider bottles, dusty and draped with spider webs, that lined the north wall of the unfinished basement in her childhood home. Ms. Black’s work appears in over 40 publications over many decades. Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, her poems have placed in contests, secured best-in-issue accolades, and been selected for anthology/anniversary-issue publications. The Snow Arrow: Selected Poems gathers many of these poems as well as some newer pieces. Since her retirement from librarianship at the University of Pennsylvania, she has added abstract painting (see cover art) and playwriting to her creative pursuits. Her first play, Welcome to the RAA, received a staged reading at Burning Coal Theater in 2021 and she is at work on a second called The Drip in which hypodermic media indoctrination, climate change, cultism, and conceptual art collide to test family relations. She resides in Wallingford, PA with her husband George though they spend a lot of “spirit time” on Rainbow Lake in the Adirondacks.

https://www.facebook.com/sharon.black.31/

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From the Other Side of Maybe

a poetic memoir by P.M. Draper

A Journey of Family, Loss, and the Lifelong Vow to Never Forget

Do you really know the backstory of your family history?

In, From the Other Side of Maybe, P.M. Draper crafts a poetic memoir. For her granddaughters. In six chapters, she outlines her life story couched in her poetry. In so doing, she weaves a tale that carries the reader through unimaginable happenings and heartbreak. Each chapter begins with a letter to her granddaughters, hinting at what they’ll soon read.

Growing up with an impaired mother. An absentee father for ten years, before tragedy brings him back. An exercise in survival.

P.M. Draper does just that: survive, despite losing her brothers and sister to untimely circumstances. She puts together her saga in such a way that not only tells what happened but illustrates the strength and beauty of the human spirit.

Early Praise

In her arresting and haunting hybrid memoir, From the Other Side of Maybe, P.M. Draper explores the lifelong reverberations of family dysfunction and tragedy. Through an expertly woven tapestry of poetry, letters and traditional narrative, Draper shines a bright light on what it means to endure unthinkable trauma and loss—and move to unearth ways to build a life filled with meaning and beauty. A richly layered and powerful work of literature, brimming with humor and love, From The Other Side of Maybe stays with the reader as an inspiring reminder of the human spirit’s stunning capacity for resilience.

—SKIPWITH COALE, writer/poet

This heartwarming collection comprises unposted letters addressed to a latter generation, filled with family history, words of advice and a lovely collection of poetry relating the author’s experiences, transitions and growing up into her full realization of life. Stories and verse within are appended with such tragedy, hardship, switchbacks, and loss along her course that one might wonder how she arrived at all in such a place to proclaim to her beloved granddaughters: You are my unbound joy, my prayer for every tomorrow. / We are family—you make me believe in second chances./ I write from the other side of Maybe.

—SEAN SEXTON, author of  May Darkness Restore and Portals

P.M.Draper will wrench your heart out of you, but she’ll do it in such a way that you don’t realize it at first. So, you will keep reading: what is the feeling growing in me? Where is the center of the heartbreak in this story? Draper unwinds slowly, subtly, with all the drama and pacing of a mystery novel. You simply must read on as I did—until the very last page for its filled with the understanding of the healing—even the energy and love—that can come from heartbreak.

—BONNIE MACDOUGALL, PhD., Columbia University, author of Those Who Live and Curtain Call

About the Author

P.M. Draper is the literary pseudonym Patricia ‘Pat’ Draper uses for her writing life. She has lived on the Treasure Coast of Florida since 1978. A semi-retired nurse-practitioner, she joined a local writing group in 2018. Her previous books of poetry include The Tao of Hibiscus (Rebel Magic Books, 2019) and her chapbook After Pyre (The Poetry Box, 2022). Her poem “A Time Like This” won second place in the Covid competition sponsored by the Laura (Riding) Jackson Foundation. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She is the current Poet Laureate of Indian River County. In addition to writing, she enjoys cooking and triathlon training with her husband Tom. And they both enjoy lounging with Oreo, Boston Terrier extraordinaire.

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Well Seasoned

by Joanne Kennedy Frazer

Well Seasoned honors the seasons of the natural world and of life. A subtle spirituality is woven throughout the work as it exhibits gratitude for nature, celebrates commonplace activities of family life, faces challenges of aging, and confronts injustices against planet Earth and its inhabitants. Frazer, drawing from wisdom gained during her many seasons of life, invites the reader to recognize and value their own seasons.

Enjoy a video of Joanne reading from her new book:

Early Praise

“In Joanne Kennedy Frazer’s chapbook, Well Seasoned, you find

the extra-ordinary 

    graced beauty

that some would call

nothing out of the ordinary.

Frazer’s love for nature is apparent as is her pain at our abuse of planet Earth. Throughout the work the reader senses Frazer’s deep gratitude for the natural world, and for richness of family life and of life’s stages, including the later ones. The reader will enjoy Frazer’s use of a variety of poetic forms.”

—ELAINE BAUMAN, author of To Hold It All So Gently

“Frazer chooses Thomas Merton’s prescription for happiness as an epigraph for her new collection. His call for balance, order, rhythm and harmony is reflected in the beautifully crafted poems of Well Seasoned. Beginning with a series extolling the order and restorative power of our natural world, Frazer uses the rhythm of seasons to reflect the cycles of our lives. She transitions smoothly into poems of justice, of actions bestowing dignity to all, and laments the discord and disparity of opportunity we are handing to the next generation. But there is hope. With well-seasoned wisdom, she completes this collection with poems of nurturing family and healing found through nature.”

—DOROTHY BAIRD, author of Ribbon Without End

 

About the Author

Joanne Kennedy Frazer is a retired peace and justice director and educator for faith-based organizations. Since writing her first poem at age 73, she has been published in over 100 literary venues. Having now achieved 84 years on this planet, she enjoys leisure to delight in its gifts, as well as time to grieve its desecration. She relishes her daily activity of watching a variety of birds on her balcony as they eat, drink, rest, and cock their heads, look at her. She’s fairly certain they sense her gratitude which makes it a mutual admiration society. Her go-to poetry themes are nature, justice, family and aging. Five poems have been turned into a song cycle, Resistance, by composer Steven Luksan, and performed in Seattle and Durham. Her second chapbook, Seasonings (Kelsay Books), was nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. You can follow Frazer on Substack: @poetrybyjoanne.substack.com.  She lives in Raleigh, NC.

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Morning Glory Moon

A Weaving of Free Verse and Forms

by Casey Robb

Casey Robb’s diverse collection of poetry encompasses both free verse and traditional forms, (such as sonnets, pantoums, and villanelles) to move the reader through moods that range from eerie and somber to humorous and light. Robb mines topics such as tornadoes, grief, danger, aging, ghosts, and war exploring the darker side of life, and then with poems that frolic with monkeys & mirth, fiddles & fireflies, astrophysics & trains, paintings & partings, and a spider dance, she eases the reader to a cozy landing, a winding down to sleep.

Enjoy a video of Casey reading from her new book:

Early Praise

Casey Robb is a master of using poetic repetition to move each poem full circle from beginning to end and tie it up in a neat bow. She uses images that are both haunting and startling. It’s impossible to know what to expect. Visit Casey’s world, and you’ll return home with a different vision of your everyday, ordinary life.

—NOLCHA FOX, author of Writing Between the Lines, Memory is that Raccoon, and My Pelvis Wants to Be Elvis

Casey Robb’s new collection is sub-titled A Weaving of Free Verse and Forms—apt, given her skill with both. Casey handles magical images as well as she does concrete ones—a true weaver of morning glory moons.

—KATHY KIETH, editor Medusa’s Kitchen

Casey Robb’s poetry collection Morning Glory Moon is a masterful work, which includes sonnets, villanelles, ekphrastic poems, pantoums, blank verse, free verse, terzanelles, rondels, and rondelets, among others. That alone makes this book a manual for developing poets. Although crafted according to rules for rhyme and meter, repetition, and formulas, the poems are evocative. The forms in these poems do not dominate the content. Robb’s poems express universal truth. The four parts of the book include haunting stories, myths, and memories that explore grief, humor, aging, loss, death, and other topics related to the human condition. To do so within formal poetic forms demonstrates impeccable skill.

—BARBARA HARRIS LEONHARD, editor of Feed the Holy; author of The Lost Book of Zeroth

Casey Robb’s Morning Glory Moon: A Weaving of Form and Free Verse is the breath of the spoken word, the life force engendered by a poet alone in a room with language. It is also a testament to the idea that power restrained is power released, and that form liberates the imagination. The sonnet, the villanelle, and other forms accent Robb’s distinctive voice and individual personality in settings on the rural plains of the United States, in Latin America, South America, and in the world of art. Her rhymes, similarities in sense as well as in sound, complement lucid, perceptive images. All together they showcase a poet of imagination and vision, and her concern for the terror, beauty, and wonder of the natural world. Her poems are questions, shapes of light and dark in the night sky, ruins down from the path that catch the eye, and beckon the traveler to descend and explore. The world is a wedding of harmony and discord, sense and sensuality, and self and other.

—PETE MLADINIC, author of The Whitestone Bridge and Maiden Rock

Morning Glory Moon: A Weaving of Free Verse and Forms blooms like its namesake flower that unfolds at night. Robb’s poems are radiant, rare, and full of wonder. Her collection is as much about form as it is about feeling. By weaving together Italian, Shakespearean, and Spenserian sonnets with villanelles, pantoums, and terzanelles, she weaves myths, wars, and histories into a seamless tapestry of poetry. Robb’s poetry opens slowly, revealing layers of craft, emotion, and intellect. Her poems draw from an astonishing range of allusions, from the mythic Minotaur and Greek king Agamemnon of Mycenae, to the visionary architect Maya Lin and her Vietnam Veterans Memorial. She moves effortlessly from the ancient ruins of Çatal Höyük to 1888’s ghost towns, from Cinderella’s fairy tale to the war-torn skies of Khe Sanh and Da Nang, and to the wistful journey of the Sierra Madre Train.

—MUNMUM (SAM) SAMAMTA, author of Yellow Chrysanthemums

What is your guilty pleasure? For me it’s a plate of meatloaf, mashed potatoes and macaroni & cheese. Simple but with a subtle complexity in how they come together and sit on the plate. The same can be said about Casey Robb’s poetry and how the words sit nestled on the pages and the subtle complexity in how each poem in Morning Glory Moon sits in my head. Warm, comforting with a relaxed familiarity. Don’t overthink it. Do you need anything more in well written poetry? The answer is no. And if you’re insulted in my comparing good poetry to meatloaf, then you’ve never had a really good piece of meatloaf or read really good poetry to understand what I mean.

—KEN TOMARO, author of Standing Lonely in the Alley and You’ve Got it all Wrong

In a world where the contents of almost every book of poems out there is ragged, formless and shapeless, and every poet (man or woman) is a wannabe Bukowski clone, Casey Robb and her poems are neither. Every poem is unique and finely crafted, and Casey Robb stands on her own, with a voice that’s simultaneously very familiar and refreshingly new.

—JOHN YAMRUS, author of Captain Beefheart Never Licked My Decals Off, Baby, and Don’t Shoot the Messenger; Just Give Him a Good Place to Hide

About the Author

Casey Robb is a former physical therapist and a retired civil engineer from Texas, living in Northern California near her two adopted daughters. Her early passion for poetry was rekindled in middle age in the California Federation of Chaparral Poets (CFCP). Casey’s poetry has been published in many journals and has won numerous awards, including a best-of-convention trophy and a runner-up trophy at CFCP conventions. Her poems encompass a diverse range of subjects, both light and dark. She also enjoys writing fiction. Her short stories have been published in various journals, and she is currently working on a novel.

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Gentle Currents: Poems of Pause & Peace

by Julie Potiker

with artwork by Edward Kane

Gentle Currents is a poetry collection created as a refuge for the heart—a soft landing for souls seeking hope, tenderness, and renewal. Through mindful self-compassion, the poems invite readers to slow down, notice the world around them, and reconnect with the resilience and love that live within us all. Each piece flows with awareness of our shared humanity and our deep connection to nature, holding everything—joy, grief, imperfection—with open arms.

Accompanied by Edward Kane’s luminous watercolor paintings, these poems form a vibrant, all-color gift book. The result is a work of art that nourishes the senses while offering emotional sustenance. Written and illustrated in the spirit of community—rooted in the Wednesday morning mindfulness meditation group that began in the lockdown of 2020—Gentle Currents celebrates love in all its forms: love for self, for each other, and for the planet.

Enjoy a video of Julie reading from her new book:

Early Praise

Gentle Currents is the perfect title for this collection, which invites us into deeper mindfulness and presence in every moment of our crowded lives. Reading Julie Potiker’s poems is like slipping into a refreshing stretch of ocean: we feel ourselves held by the largeness and power of her attention to the world around her, buoyed by the abundance of the here and now. This book will remind you, over and over, this is how the soul spells home.

—JAMES CREWS, author of Turning Toward Grief and Breathing Room

In a world that feels shaky, unsettled, far from gentle, Gentle Currents is just the breath of fresh air we so urgently need. Julie Potiker’s poems, paired with Edward Kane’s watercolor paintings, drop me deeply into my heart space, settle my nervous system, and remind me that when I let go and float, beauty always finds me. You will want to keep this treasure close, a north star pointing you toward home when the waves of life threaten to pull you under.

—JULIA FEHRENBACHER, author of Staying in Love

These are poems of noticing, opening and relishing. Poems that remind us how deeply connected we are to all around us, from the Acorn Woodpecker to the uncountable particles of star dust swirling the universe. And when combined with the stunning art of Edward Kane, these poems become prayer, become lifeline, become an invitation to be wildly present in our own lives. It’s never been more important that we, like Julie Potiker, choose to pause, to integrate, to turn toward peace.

—ROSEMERRY WAHTOLA TROMMER, author of The Unfolding and host of The Poetic Path

Gentle Currents is a collection to be savored slowly, perhaps with a steaming mug of tea. Julie Potiker takes us by the hand and leads us into places of quiet beauty and peace, causing us to slow down, breathe, and notice the everyday miracles around us.  Paired with the graceful paintings of Edward Kane, this volume is a treasure.

Potiker’s voice is tender and steady, with a rare authenticity, as her eyes gaze with unflinching love at grief, gratitude, memory, and renewal. Some of her poems remind us of the preciousness of human connection and inspire us to hold those we love more closely. Often her poetry is heartwarming, occasionally heartbreaking, but always heartfelt. Allow these words to float you to an inner refuge from an often-turbulent world.

—CELESTE BOUDREAUX, author of Sherry and the Butterfly Lady

As the world gets noisier and busier, Julie Potiker brings us home to quiet and stillness.  Each of her poems is a balm to a bruised heart, opening into the loving vastness amidst all things. You feel her presence with you, connecting with the ancient relational systems in your own brain, rocking you gently in the rhythms of her words. In this beautiful collection, again and again you will find—as she puts it—moments of ease / to string together like pearls.

—RICK HANSON, Ph.D., author of Buddha’s Brain, Hardwiring Happiness, and Neurodharma

Reading Gentle Currents draws you into Potiker’s world of awareness, where familiar things suddenly feel new—the grosbeak, the carob tree, the green coins of the aspen. Your busy mind softens; you settle by the river, savoring the spacious calm of simply being and remembering what truly matters: love, community, family, friendship. These poems truly are gentle currents guiding us home.

—KAREN BLUTH, author of The Self-Compassionate Teen and Mindful Self-Compassion for Teens in Schools

Reading this collection feels like pausing beside a river: listening, breathing, remembering what matters. With the sensitivity of a teacher and the courage of a poet, Julie Potiker turns ordinary moments of love and loss into glimmers of insight. The poetry and art together invite us to rest in beauty, to find compassion in impermanence, and to meet the world—nature and our own nature—with tenderness.

—CASSANDRA VIETEN, PhD, clinical professor and director of UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness

The poet invites us on an attentive, even prayerful, journey. Our companions: sun and moon, bees and aspen trees, matzo balls and brisket, shards and sorrows, yellow poppies and wild roses . . . the entire rhapsody we tune into. At the end, we’re left with what we begin with: thank you thank you thank you. That’s more than enough.

—PHYLLIS COLE-DAI, poet/writer,  co-editor of the Poetry of Presence volumes

About the Author

Julie Potiker is a mindfulness expert, author, and—much to her own delight—a debut poet at the age of 65. Her journey to poetry feels like a joyful surprise, arriving after a decade of helping others bring more peace and wellness into their lives through her Mindful Methods for Life programs. A former attorney, Julie is a Certified Mindful Self-Compassion teacher affiliated with UCSD Center for Mindfulness, and founder of the Balanced Mind Meditation Center in La Jolla, California. She trained with leaders in the field, including Kristin Neff, Christopher Germer, and Rick Hanson, and holds certifications in trauma-sensitive mindfulness, grief education, and multiple adaptations of the Mindful Self-Compassion program.

Her first two books—SNAP! From Chaos to Calm and Life Falls Apart, but You Don’t Have To— and are available in print and audiobook format. Julie’s work has been featured in The Oprah Magazine, Costco Connection, AARP, and major news outlets including NBC, CBS, and Fox. Now, she embraces the wonder of sharing her first poetry collection, proof that creativity can bloom at any stage of life. More at MindfulMethodsForLife.com.

About the Artist

Edward Kane is a watercolor artist and illustrator of children’s books with more than 30 years of professional experience in graphic design, photo editing and teaching art, art history, and drawing at Platt College of Multimedia Design. He holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in art and art history from the University of California, Berkeley. For many years Edward has exhibited his work at the San Diego Watercolor Society.

Julie’s poems in Gentle Currents relate to mindfulness and acted as a catalyst for the watercolor paintings. Edward’s illustrations for Gentle Currents are his third collaboration with an author and his first effort illustrating a book of poetry. Many of Julie’s poems reference familiar backyard birds such as crows, sparrows, wrens, and hummingbirds and animals such as elk, cows, and rabbits for which Edward has a passion.

When not working on art projects, Edward enjoys cultivating his backyard canyon sanctuary for birds, blooms and wildlife. To learn more about Edward’s art visit: edwardkaneart.com

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Lucy the Elephant Wins in a Landslide

by John Arthur

Grand Prize Winner, The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2025

Being alive is strange. Growing up a few miles from a giant elephant that was a hotel and is now a National Historic Landmark can help put things into perspective. Lucy the Elephant Wins in a Landslide is a coming-of-age story for the deeply perplexed. It is a love letter to New Jersey from someone who has lived and worked all over the Garden State. It is an abandoned Ferris Wheel overlooking a run-down casino. It is a seagull stealing what you thought was your last cheese fry, until you look in the bucket and find with great joy there’s still one more.

Enjoy a video of John reading from his new book:

Early Praise

John Arthur describes Lucy the Elephant Wins in a Landslide as a love letter to New Jersey, a state full of “run-down casinos and strange historic landmarks overlooking the sea. It is surf rock mixed with punk at a dive bar off an alley on the Jersey Shore.” What he doesn’t mention is that these poems are spoken in one of the freshest, most compelling voices I have encountered in years. He manages the difficult trick of being both funny and deeply serious in the same poem. It’s like he peeled off layers of old paint from the English language to discover a long-lost masterpiece.

—GEORGE BILGERE, contest judge, author of Cheap Motels of My Youth

In Lucy the Elephant Wins in a Landslide, varied forms and interesting structures are on display: haiku, haibun, braided and stream-of-consciousness poems. John Arthur keeps us firmly grounded in the state of New Jersey. The place shapes how its residents study, love, and work, with the smell of onions permeating their work clothes. The environment breeds both fantasy and cynicism with poems bringing us past the top of the Ferris wheel to the moon or using the implosion of a casino to explain gravity to a child.

—DEBORAH BAYER, author of Rope Made of Bandages

In Lucy the Elephant Wins in a Landslide, John Arthur writes from the quiet fault lines between urgency and inaction, compassion and self-preservation. This book is a mash up between craft and the everyday colloquial speech of the playground. These poems refuse easy consolations, instead they live and linger in the moments when we hear the world calling out—sometimes faintly, sometimes in shattering crescendos—and choose to stay in bed, to keep scrolling, to make coffee. And sometimes, like in the poem “Atlantic Cape Community College,” to hear the speaker holler, And this fuckin’ guy…, Arthur’s voice is tender and unflinching, charting the uneasy coexistence of intimacy and indifference in a world oversaturated with need. This is a book about the distance between the sorrow of the human condition and the answers that never come, even though we fight, every day, into the colors of hope, the elephants always knowing more than we do.

 —MATTHEW LIPPMAN, author of We Are All Sleeping with Our Sneakers On 

About the Author

John Arthur is a writer and musician from New Jersey. His work has appeared in Rattle, DIAGRAM, Frogpond, Failbetter, trampset, ONE ART, and many other places. He has worked as a valet at a casino, a waiter, a Ferris Wheel operator, a cook, a pizza delivery driver, a fast food delivery driver, a kati roll delivery driver, a landscaper for a week or so, a journalist, an editor, a librarian, a library director, a municipal manager, and for one long, hot day as a guy going door to door asking if you’d like to donate to the Sierra Club. His band is The Deafening Colors.

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All That Glitter

by Katie Dozier

Editor’s Choice, The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2025

All That Glitter is a treasure hunt through the everyday—a collection of poems that takes you on a journey from the quiet of an empty house to dancing with the wild sequins of childhood. It’s about finding the magic in seemingly small moments—from messy craft projects to a spectacular double rainbow on a Tuesday afternoon. With poems that explore both the sweet and the challenging side of mothering two young daughters after a divorce, this chapbook invites you to uncover some of life’s most moving moments. You’ll want to stick around to rediscover what it really means to sparkle.

Enjoy a video of Katie reading from her new book:

Early Praise

Katie Dozier’s All That Glitter is a delightful book about childhood—and the way that daughters can pull a mother into play and wonder and doubt: the other parents think/ I’ve raised a brat. As kids learn their ABCs (there’s even an abecedarian!) their mother invents sophisticated formal poetic challenges and the girls in these poems keep up with their witty observations—”Why are we never running early?” Through haiku, sonnet, villanelle and haibun-like gestures, Dozier’s verse about parenting and neurodiversity, shared custody and making a new home, sparkles.

—DENISE DUHAMEL, author of Pink Lady

Katie Dozier writes with remarkable lyrical dexterity. She flexes and bends language to create imagery heavy with linguistic subtext and meaning. In these intimate and powerful poems, things aren’t always what they seem. Fireworks pose as flowers, eyes are filled with drought, choosing a clove of garlic becomes a morality tale, reach for what/ is heavy for its size, tightly packed and ugly. But while the imagery is layered and complex, running through every poem is a simple, steadfast force: a mother’s profound and abiding love. Every poem pulses with maternal devotion. This is a mother who bought/ the world to make it beautiful for her children. Who dreamed into reality a home that smells of pumpkin pie spice. You can’t read this lovely, bittersweet collection without feeling immensely tender towards the family that populates it. [A] perfect/ little girl/ lost/ in her own/ bamboo forest. A girl who sings to the succulents. A mother who paints her nails in, “I Just Can’t Cope Acabana” nail polish, whose neurodivergent child has tantrums that paint fire-engines/ on the floor. But still, a mother who wraps her children in, Love a kind of/ chrysalis, never/ to be undone. All That Glitter is a spellbinding collection. Once read, these poems will take up permanent residence in your heart.

—NANCY MILLER GOMEZ, author of Inconsolable Objects

 

Katie Dozier’s All That Glitter is an ode to “otherness” and a peephole into parenting and the heaviness of the world, via singing into hairbrushes and slamming doors. It’s what I call a set of sleight-of-hand poems as Dozier teases us into focusing on a string of “look what’s happening over there”, while skillfully pulling together a powerful concoction of “yoo-hoo, it’s really all happening right here.” Oh, the liberties she takes, her words a series of brushstroke swirls, her intentions a daffodil facing the sun,  x-ing out the answers from yesterday. Truth be told (or tattled), this life is short. We could all use a little more glitter and Dozier brings it!

—KARI GUNTER-SEYMOUR, Ohio Poet Laureate, author of Dirt Songs

About the Author

Katie Dozier’s love of poetry first bloomed as a child. She memorized Robert Frost sitting on a tree stump and bathed in Edgar Allan Poe as an adolescent. While studying words at Florida State University, KHD also played with chips and became a professional poker player. She’s passionate about encouraging others to discover and share contemporary poetry, through her X account (@Katie_Dozier), her Substack, and NFTs.  KHD is the author of All That Glitter, Watering Can: a Month of Poems, and the co-author of Hot Pink Moon: a Crown of Haibun and Did You See the Moon Honey. She is the creator of the top-rated podcast The Poetry Space_, the haiku editor for One Art, and an editor at Rattle. Katie lives in The Woodlands, Texas, with her husband Timothy Green, their four children, and way too many books.

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No Lightsabers in the Kitchen

by John Wojtowicz

Designer’s Choice, The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2025

No Lightsabers in the Kitchen explores the humor, strangeness, and gravity of parenting, partnership, and the small, meaningful rituals of everyday life. This collection is about trying to stay present, screw up a little less, and pay attention to the moments that might matter most. It’s about what happens when a dad with a soft spot for ghosts, flowering shrubs, hitchhikers, and reptiles starts writing poems instead of fixing the bathroom door.

Enjoy a video of John reading from his new book:

Early Praise

A student of turtles, inchworms and grappling hooks, Walmarts and Wawas, AA, AAA and DEA, Wojtowicz is amazed to be living in the living rooms of a pack, a herd, a pride, a family he can’t believe he helped create. His astonishment explodes in “lying like a yin-yang / on a road-worn Guatemalan / blanket and fell asleep in the shade / of a Catawba rhododendron / as a nectarine sunset / juiced the Appalachian Mountains.” There may not be a Jedi in his kitchen or a Millennium Falcon in his garage, but there is so much joy in the wild domesticity of these poems, you’ll want to slow down from hyperdrive to enjoy them.

—PETER E. MURPHY, author of You Too Were Once on Fire

Reading Wojtowicz’s poetry is the gift of getting a ride when no one else will pick you up or having your toast popped and buttered as you enter the kitchen. In a world that can be confusing and difficult, Wojtowicz gives himself, his wife, his children, and you, dear reader, permission to wonder, laugh, love, explore, and imagine. You are encouraged to be followed by the moon, romance beaches, condition doorknobs, and nurse turtles, but please, no lightsabers in the kitchen– leave the ghost of you in peace.

—DIMITRI REYES, author of Papi Pichón

Full of humor and surprise, John Wojtowicz’s No Lightsabers in the Kitchen humanizes the speaker by showing his loving side as a father, despite his struggles in other areas of life. In poems like “Wild” and “Shake Your Tail Feathers,” the dad mimics a chicken at his child’s request and attends “a birthday party for an inchworm named Spike.” In John’s poems, it is as if the speaker is asking to be seen like his children see him, through impartial eyes and childhood innocence. Ultimately, John’s poetry invites us to reexamine our own relationships and listen and respond to the smaller voices in our circle who have the power to lift us up and keep us there.

—SHAWN R. JONES, author of Date of Birth

About the Author

John Wojtowicz grew up working on his family’s azalea and rhododendron nursery and still lives in the backwoods of what Ginsberg dubbed “nowhere Zen New Jersey” with his wife and two children. Currently, he teaches social work at Rowan College South Jersey. He has been featured on Rowan University’s Writer’s Roundtable on 89.7 WGLS-FM and Painted Bride Quarterly’s Slush Pile Podcast. Several of his poems were selected for Princeton University’s 2021 Unique Minds: Creative Voices exhibition at the Lewis Center for the Arts. When not writing, teaching, or rolling around in the yard, he enjoys monitoring bluebird boxes, volunteering at the Cohanzick Zoo, and flipping horseshoe crabs.

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Solitary Light: Mourning Poems

by Priscilla Bernard Wieden

Poetry is conduit for communicating our shared experiences and broadening our understanding—of ourselves and each other. In her debut book of poetry, Solitary Light, Priscilla Bernard Wieden shares her journey when the unspeakable happens, and then offers every grieving widow a glimmer of light. These poems are a beacon to help you find your way out of the despair of grief, to help you look deep inside your own spirit, and emerge with a heart full of loving memories as you find the beauty in joyful living that still awaits you.

Enjoy a video of Priscilla reading from her new book:

Early Praise

A lone woman wrapped in a shawl and looking out to sea, a group of women dressed in black walking down the cobbled stone of a village, a young woman finding love letters to another after her husband has died. Loss romanticized, trivialized, and used for dramatic effect, widowhood has long been a thing the rest of us only whisper about. That all changes in Priscilla Bernard Wieden’s incredible collection of poems, which chronicle the first year of loss and grief following the death of her beloved husband, Dan. These poems are beautiful, sad, lyrical, and absolutely human. Bernard Wieden guides us through this pain with a strong hand, even as she guides her own broken heart.

—Matthew Dickman author of All-American Poem and Husbandry Poems

Solitary Light addresses death and the cycle of life with extraordinary beauty. Heart-wrenching poetry, yes. An ode to love, yes. And so much more. It is an adventure into feelings that plunge us to the depths of sorrow—“A mourning morning,/ Empty/ Again” —and that send us soaring to the ecstasy of living in the present while healing— “Sitting in a sunbeam, / like all creatures, / seeking warmth, / seeking healing.” Priscilla opens her heart and soul to us. And creates a masterpiece that is a must read for anyone who knows grief or joy— in other words, for all of us.

—John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman

Ardently hoping that her poems will be a balm to others grieving the death of a beloved spouse, Priscilla Bernard Wieden gives us Solitary Light. What shines from these pages is, indeed, a beacon of hope, one with enough strength to penetrate darkness. Although hers is a heart that remembers and practices “the ancient art of keening,” she also discovers solace and delight in small, mundane blessings. With deep wisdom, Wieden conveys the necessity to accept and even embrace sorrow so that healing can begin. Her poems celebrate “finding light / in broken places / where joy / timidly slips in.”

—Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita

When your good one goes, at death, what can anyone say into that absence? Some will say to you, “Words cannot begin to express….” But that is no consolation, and it’s not true. In this book, Priscilla Bernard Wieden writes poems that fill that absence with questing, searching, trying. These are poems from the first days of grief, where words have the courage to begin to express both sorrow and survival. This book is about one person’s grief as a companion for many, for you.

—Kim Stafford, author of 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared

Priscilla Bernard Wieden’s collection of poetry is an exquisite, elegant, searing, powerful, heartbreaking, glorious, wrenching, transformational, and unforgettable journey through grief—and—through her incredible capacity to rediscover her life force, love for life itself and eventually infinite joy. Solitary Light book will deeply serve widows and widowers alike, but also any and all of us who love and cherish one another on life’s journey. I celebrate the healing power of her words and this extraordinary book.

—Lynne Twist –author of The Soul of Money and Living a Committed Life

 

About the Author

Priscilla Bernard Wieden is a lifelong Poet and Arts, Education and Environmental advocate. She is celebrated for her active engagement in Portland’s vibrant artistic community and contributions to Caldera, an award-winning year-round program for underserved youth, dedicated to nurturing creative and environmental education. Priscilla serves as Co-chair of the Caldera Board, an organization founded by the Wieden family in 1996 with the belief in the power of creativity. She also currently serves on the Board of Literary Arts and on the board of Trustees for Wieden + Kennedy.

Priscilla has devoted her life to being of service in the healing arts, having founded and run Evergreen Clinic for 35 years, and in the theater arts, having served as Board Chair for Profile Theatre. In 2024, she was a TedX Salon Speaker “Courage emerges from Love” on Mortality after the passing of her husband, Wieden and Kennedy Founder and creator of the eponymous “Just Do It” Nike Tagline, Dan Wieden.

Priscilla is a proud mother, grandmother and gardener. She stays immersed in issues of social justice, the arts, women and children, housing, the environment, and hunger, including past Board service with Urban Gleaners and Ecotrust, keeping Priscilla actively engaged with the world.

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