I somehow didn’t post this essay that I wrote based on my time as artist in residence at the Isles of Shoals. Published by the wonderful nature-writing magazine Terrain.org, it centers on a necropsy of a seal pup that died from entanglement in ‘ghost gear,’ or a lost fishing net. With the seal’s body as …
Read more “The Reaper of the Sea”
I have some thrilling news, which is that my middle-grade novel, THE MONARCHS OF WINGHAVEN, will be published by Walker Books US in the spring of 2022: I’m so happy to have this opportunity to put a book into the world about a theme dear to my heart: a young person’s bond with nature. As …
Read more “The Monarchs of Winghaven”
Thinking of Mary Oliver today as this riff on my favorite of her poems, the beautiful Sleeping in the Forest, arrived in my mailbox in this year’s Connecticut River Review. In honor too of my high school summer writing students who shared this moment with me. View this post on Instagram In honor of Mary …
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On my return from ten days on Cape Cod, I was excited to learn that my poem “Pomegranate” was selected as the 2nd-prize winner in the Poetry Society of New Hampshire’s national competition. Poet Alfred Nichol was the judge. The poem will appear in an upcoming issue of The Poets’ Touchstone. Hooray!
Nature journals have been on my mind lately. Really, they’re always on my mind. The practice of nature journaling has been with me since I first started bird-watching at 12 years old. I’d go outdoors with a notebook, binoculars and a Rite in the Rain pen or pencil in tow. Then I’d take notes and …
I’m so pleased and eager to announce that I’ll be this year’s judge for the New England Poetry Club 2019 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize. The award goes out to a chapbook published within the last two years. My chapbook Water Street, from Finishing Line Press, won last year’s Pedrick Prize (alongside co-winner C. Prudence Arceneaux’s …
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Despite wintry weather chewing at my edges I’ve spent plenty of time outdoors roaming the Pioneer Valley in the last few months. In late January, UMass geoscientist Julie Brigham-Grette took me for a McPhee-style gander through regional geology: Right now, we’re turning down a squelchy, pitted dirt road in the back fields of Sunderland. Minutes …
Read more “Roaming the Valley – ancient lakes, frogs, and sand volcanoes”
This summer, I had the extraordinary opportunity to spend June as artist in residence at the Shoals Marine Laboratory on Appledore Island, one of the Isles of Shoals off the coast of Maine and New Hampshire. As the first poet they’d had in the position, I spent many hours wandering the sea-washed granite outcrops, peering …
Read more “The Isles of Shoals – Poems”
I’ve been slow to post my latest columns for the Daily Hampshire Gazette, so here’s a slug of them. Unsurprisingly, they all center on a similar theme – the way our world is heating, burning, every day hotter to the touch and to the thought. It’s burning in real ways, like my article on the …
I sit on a hotel’s tile balcony, halfway to my destination. The midday sun lies hot on stucco walls and tile roofs. Between the buildings I see a sliver of sea; across the bay, a spine of green-sided mountains cuts the sky. Around me gulls call. All colors here are bright, clear, and strong: white …
Read more “In Search of Vincent van Gogh”