Waking in the Blue
Poetry & Essays about Mental Health

Edited by Sherri Levine and Sam Rose Preminger

In this ground-breaking anthology—curated by Sherri Levine—more than three dozen authors share their poetry and personal reflections on illness, healing, and how mental health shapes the craft of writing. In the Foreword by John Fox, founder of The Institute for Poetic Medicine, he writes, “Waking in the Blue is infused with inclusion & surprise, heartbreak & struggle, wisdom & love.” This book is an invitation for anyone to tap into their own creative spark as a way to heal and maintain their own mental health or help someone who may be struggling. The compassionate message that rings true throughout these pages will remind the reader: you are not alone.

Contributing Poets/Essayists:

Kelli Russell Agodon • Shawn Aveningo Sanders • Lana Hechtman Ayers • Miriam Bassuk • Zan Bockes • David Stanford Burr • Susan Carberry • Elisa Carlsen • Linda Casebeer • Dale Champlin • Tinamarie Cox • James Crews • Merridawn Duckler • Nadine Dunseith • Nadine Ellsworth-Moran • Elizabeth Brulé Farrell • Andrea Hollander • Dana I. Hunter • Marc Janssen • Auna Johannesen • Joan Kantor • Tricia Knoll • Payal Kudesia • Laurinda Lind • Catherine Mary Macías • Karen Marker • Carolyn Martin • Emily Moon • Frances Opila • Sam Rose Preminger • Anna Quon • Bonnie Henderson Schell • elmo shade • Diana Spore • Margaret Stawowy • Chase Twichell • Jeanann Verlee • Koon Woon • Victoria Wyttenberg

Early Praise

Waking in the Blue is testimony and revelation, a breaking through barriers of silence, shame and stigma, revealing healing powers of poetry, courageous self-expression, and empathic community by those who have walked the talk, those living with severities of mental health distress such as anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD, grief, and more. Reading Waking in the Blue is to know you are not alone. Be inspired to befriend your own poetic voice and discover the gifts it will bring.

—Diane Kaufman, MD, founder/director, Hold On Campaign for Suicide Prevention

Though there is plenty in these pages to feel sad or scared or mad about, the poems and brief essays in this anthology contain beauty and wisdom and deep humanity. To enter the work of these poets is to be allowed into an authentic, vulnerable place that is moving, compassionate and often exquisitely created. I felt honored to be let inside the minds of these authors, but best of all, I was lifted time and again by the authors’ faith in poetry—how for both reader and writer, no matter how disordered or stormy the weather of our hearts and minds, poetry can keep us alive. Thank you Sherri Levine and Sam Rose Preminger for compiling this important book.

—Julia Levine, PhD, author, winner of the Pablo Neruda Prize in Poetry

Sherri Levine’s edited anthology, Waking in the Blue: Poetry & Essays for Mental Health, is a powerful collection of Poetry and essays by a blend of highly respected and emerging contemporary poets. What makes this collection stunning is Levine’s invitation to each contributor to address how their mental health affects their creative process. Each entry includes one to four poems followed by a brief essay in which the author describes—and occasionally analyzes—how their life experiences shaped their work. This is one of the most haunting and satisfying literary anthologies I have ever read. We first see the actors presenting their craft on stage, and then we go backstage to sit with them as they tell their stories. While the Poetry is often lyrical, melancholy, and nuanced—with occasional hints of sunshine and humor—the essays often reveal horrifying traumas, quiet isolation, and years of crippling anxiety. These narratives serve as a powerful testament to how poetry can be used to navigate a difficult past. As a reader, I came away with a far deeper respect for these writers and the resilience behind their craft. This book should be required reading for aspiring poets and mental health professionals alike.

—James Pennebaker, professor emeritus of psychology, University of Texas at Austin

How does a mad girl pop and sizzle? The writings in Waking in the Blue are testimonies to the lived experiences of its writers and their mental health challenges. They are not just histories of sadness and trauma. Here are the mechanics of writing for psychological survival: raw, marvelous metaphors, honest anguish, poetry shaped by emotion. These poems and writings remind us that even in the depths of suffering, language can become a lifeline—and that the fragile, courageous act of telling one’s story can turn solitude into solidarity and pain into something luminous.

— Sherry Reiter, PhD, CM, director, The Creative “Righting” Center

Waking in the Blue is a celebration of human spirit—how we endure, how we suffer, how we thrive. As Payal Kudesia writes, “My mental illness often feels like both a curse and a muse,” but when these experiences are shared with courage, honesty and generosity, they become gift. How do we meet what is most difficult? How does writing help us practice self-compassion and self-awareness? How do we honor all aspects of our aliveness? How do we go on when our next breath feels like a risk we’re not sure we can take? These writers open us to the complexities of our humanness. I found myself and my beloveds on every page. This book makes me tremble and want to cheer at the same time.

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, author of The Wonderment, host of The Poetic Path

About the Editors

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Still Life with Sorrow & Joy

by Lana Hechtman Ayers

Life is fleeting, death inevitable. Still Life with Sorrow & Joy contemplates death from myriad vantage points, including communication with those gone via letters or phone or from within the landscape of dreams, embracing the possibility of a forever connection between souls. These poems are infused with images of the cherished times spent with family and beloved pets—sweet, aching memories, as well as with images of nature’s bounty—the sublime night sky, the rush of waves, the patter of raindrops. The poet faces her own aging and mortality with a sense of acceptance, hope, and even humor. Perhaps death and what follows death will always remain somewhat of a mystery, but death’s dark shores can be illuminated and mapped, as they are in this collection, by thoughtful and heartfelt meditations, offering readers comfort and companionship as we all journey towards our great unknowable end.

Enjoy a video of Lana reading from her new book:

Early Praise

As easily as water, that’s how I want to leave this earth writes Lana Hechtman Ayers, in this, her stellar, fourteenth collection, Still Life with Sorrow & Joy. The poems curated here are, in part, a feast of losses, but the work moves through several registers; I love that there’s also dark comedy, imaginings of the afterlife, and most of all a fierce love for this world. Ayers knows how imagination is part dream…dipperful by dipperful, how the sky is a blue door that opens both ways. Over and over again, I came across lines that I wish I had written. Hard-earned wisdom and a belief in wonder keep showing us, as readers, how to appreciate this life, sawdust scattering around us like starlight, like meteor shower. This is a book you’ll want to hold close.

—SUSAN RICH, author of Blue Atlas

Still Life with Sorrow & Joy is a joyous celebration of both. Yes, poet Lana Hechtman Ayers laments, I can’t handle another / dead dog, / dead aunt, / dead lover, / dead plumber, / dead fly even, but even this list carries a kind of delight in its unexpected variety. Or how to describe the rush of time: Hours are field mice / flitting in every direction. Ayers has learned to carry the pebbles / of grief in my arms / without dropping a single one. Indeed, this collection makes them shine.

—PENELOPE SCAMBLY SCHOTT, author of Sophia & Mr. Walt Whitman
and gOD: A Respectfully Divergent Testament

This exquisite series of poems is an extended meditation on death, loss, remembrance and transformation through the interaction between the dead and the living, the living speaker’s deepest dreams of the beloved departed. Lana Hechtman Ayers’ speaker, who calls herself a splintered self who practices a shoddy Buddhism, enacts the growing lyricism of her poetic voice throughout this collection. As she recalls, for example, the wonder of first experiencing the Big Dipper during a blackout, when her native New York City is plunged into darkness in a five-borough power outage, she watches her father frame the constellations for her with his hands, and her child-turned-adult self still feel[s] its pulse / orbiting the fatherless galaxy of my heart. We readers know that we are in the presence of a powerful sensibility, as the poet summons us to come like a clock that chimes all hours, and we must heed her voice, because (as she addresses the force of life itself) each day you fly the moon over my house / like a flag of welcome. This is a poet who can teach us how to live, with joy, with our own dying, and what better cause for celebration could we have?

—CAROLYNE WRIGHT, author of Masquerade and This Dream the World: New & Selected Poems

About the Author

Lana Hechtman Ayers worked in insurance, mutual funds, customer service, research, and fact-checking but her true calling is publishing the work of other poets as managing editor of Concrete Wolf Poetry Series, MoonPath Press, and World Enough Writers. She also facilitates generative writing workshops in the Amherst Method, conducts an online poetry book club, and produces the weekly Poem After Poem Newsletter.

Lana earned BAs in Mathematics and Psychology, holds a Masters in Counseling Therapy, and possesses MFAs in Poetry and in Writing Popular Fiction. A multiple Best of the Net, Pushcart Prize, and National Book Award nominee, she won honors in the Discovery / The Nation Award and in the Rita Dove Poetry Prize. She was awarded writing residencies from Hedgebrook, Devils Tower National Park, and The Whiteley Foundation.

She is the author of thirteen previous collections of poems and chapbooks, including: Sky Over (Fernwood Press, 2026), The Autobiography of Rain (Fernwood Press, 2024), Overtures (Kelsay Books, 2023), When All Else Fails (The Poetry Box, 2023), Red Riding Hood’s Real Life (Night Rain Press, 2017), The Moon’s Answer (Egress Studio Press, 2016), Dance From Inside My Bones (Snake Nation Press, 2007), winner of the Haas Award, and Chicken Farmer I Still Love You (D-N Publishing, 2007), winner of D-N’s annual award. She published a romantic time travel adventure, Time Flash: Another Me (Night Rain Books, 2018), and hopes someday to complete the sequel, currently stalled at 25,000 words.

Originally, from New York City, she relocated to the Pacific Northwest after a dozen-year sojourn in New England. She now lives in coastal Oregon on unceded lands of the Alsea people with her beloved husband and fur babies, where on clear, quiet nights she can hear the Pacific Ocean whispering to the moon. Rain devotee, former coffee obsessive, her favorite color is the swirl of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night.

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by Lana Hechtman Ayers

Open-hearted and unwavering, Lana Hechtman Ayer’s poems of vivid imagery navigate the reader through a lifetime—a rocky childhood, self-discoveries as a young woman, the many losses of adulthood, then finally learning to anchor one’s existence to beauty. These poems explore growing up with an abusive mother, attentive grandmothers, and a distant but caring father. The poet also examines the ethos of the times, bullying, and the ordeals of being female in a male-dominant culture. Giving voice to a connection with nature, the arts, creativity, and loving relationships, the collection is filled with uplifting insights. Ultimately, When All Else Fails celebrates the restorative power of poetry itself.

Early Praise for When All Else Fails:

Lana Hechtman Ayers’ unflinchingly honest and sensual poetry traces her journey from a difficult childhood in Queens spent in the dark house of my mother’s anger where the poet grew scrupulous as an owl, to a wildly luxuriant maturity in the Pacific Northwest where she revels in intimacy with sky and water, trees, birds, and a loving partner. The shadows of New York give way to a wide open spaciousness and a vibrant appreciation of simple gifts: eggs from the Farmer’s Market, the sound of rain, a beloved dog, and the window in the poet’s study where One windy day I became a kite. Ayers generously takes us along on her journey from violence and decay to a hard-earned rebirth into nature, love, and art. In the end, we too are redeemed.

—Alison Luterman, author of In the Time of the Great Fires

When All Else Fails reminds us that poetry can arise from even the most difficult circumstances. Lana Hechtman Ayers takes the raw material of extreme childhood poverty and abuse and turns it into one arresting poem after another. Even more remarkable is that the poet emerges from this crucible not just alive but fully alive, willing to embrace everything, knowing that she’s here to touch/ the blank page with reverent ink. Ayers’ good humor and generosity of spirit are hard-won and all the more authentic for that. When All Else Fails is a powerful book about the redemptive power of poetry.

—John Brehm, author of No Day at the Beach and The Dharma of Poetry

In this compelling free verse memoir, Lana Hechtman Ayers includes a number of poems recounting her young years spent as a sickly, mercilessly teased outsider. Her hateful mother gave her love that was a recipe for violence, and her beloved father—who kept a vigil at her side through her numerous illnesses—was one of her few solaces. But the tone here transcends darkness. These poems sing with joy and reverence for a world hard as agate but twice as beautiful. Ayers’ work speaks to us in a vividly rich lyric voice born to be the sky’s reporter, mood ring for the rain.

—Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita

About the Author:

Lana Hechtman Ayers, originally from New York, settled in the Pacific Northwest after a decade in New England. She is managing editor of three poetry presses: Concrete Wolf Poetry Series, MoonPath Press, and World Enough Writers. She facilitates generative writing workshops in the Amherst Method, runs a poetry book club, helps other poets assemble manuscripts, and teaches at writer’s conferences.

Lana holds MFAs in Poetry and Writing Popular Fiction and is a Hedgebrook residency alumna. A Best of the Net, Pushcart Prize, and National Book Award nominee, she won honors in the Discovery / Nation Award and in the Rita Dove Poetry Prize.

Author of nine previous collections of poems, she also published a romantic time travel adventure novel, Time Flash: Another Me, and is writing a sequel. A murder mystery may also be in the works.

In addition to thriving in the book-loving culture, Lana enjoys the Oregon Coast’s bountiful rain and copious coffee shops. She lives with her marvelous husband and several sweet black & white fur babies. A time travel enthusiast, she enjoys cryptograms, and watches entirely too much Home & Garden television. Her favorite color is the swirl of Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night.

Find her online: LanaAyers.com (website) | @LanaAyers23 (Twitter) | @LanaAyers23 (Instagram) |  facebook.com/lana.ayers/

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