Bøger udgivet af Finishing Line Press

Growing Old Disgracefully is a book of poems by a woman now 86 years old, who prefers to see the humor in life situations, and speak her mind as a woman, and a senior citizen. She likes to use a subtle sense of humor in her poems, and is definitely "happy to be old, not dead," as she says in her poem "How To Be Happy." She also has an 87 year old helpful husband; they will celebrate 66 years of marriage in September, 2017.

Packing a Suitcase for the Afterlife is a collection of 34 poems that probe the questions: 'How much does the essence of one's psyche weigh? Is the soul the one carry-on that we actually take with us? In the end, what do we value and what do we leave behind?' The poems are a distillation that read like a memoir, tracking the journeys of childhood, aging, care giving and life's inevitable losses. Informed by the past and grounded in the present, they're drawn from the inner life, where humor and darkness intersect. Everyday domestic scenes and visitors from the natural world appear as signposts throughout the collection. "At this stage of life, my dreams are more lifelike, and my life is more dreamlike," says the author Colleen Redman, a widely-published poet and writer who covers events for her local newspaper. "Realistic with tinges of the surreal," wrote Felicia Mitchell in a recent review. Mitchell, a poet and creative writing teacher at Virginia's Henry and Emory College, went on to state, "…she has, paradoxically, told the untold, touching on that which resides in both dreams and in life and in the borders between…" Redman, a long-time Floyd, Virginia resident, who is originally from the small coastal town of Hull, Massachusetts, writes about packing a suitcase before returning to her hometown to care for her ailing mother … The last of the packing comes down to one question / should I bring extra shoes or make room for a book / Guide to a Happy Life? / I'm still looking for a good Sinatra record / because he was to your generation / what the Beatles were to mine / and music is a memory that doesn't skip… Another poem takes a metaphysical turn, questioning the reality of time and matter …The days are small / packed tightly together / Not much room / for last minute changes … Poetry is a passport / in the universal mother tongue / It's only 4% visible / and 96% dark riddle … In 2001 Redman wrote The Jim and Dan Stories, a memoir about losing two of her brothers a month apart that was used in a grief and loss class at Radford University before it went out of print. Redman lost her older sister and mother in 2015, a loss she gives voice to in some of the poems.

Winner of the 2016 Finishing Line Press Prize in Poetry

"The poems in Border Songs," writes notable memoirist and poet, Stephen Kuusisto, "offer more than a conversation between poets: they're conversant, knowledgeable, informed by eros, loss, delight, curiosity, and intimate wisdom." In this collection, Ona Gritz and Daniel Simpson create a dialogue in poems that surveys the borders between connection and longing, having and lacking, believing and doubting, and living and dying. "That these voices, against the odds, have found one another is a sort of miracle," says award winning poet, Renee Ashley. "That they are harmonious and comforting speaks volumes of our larger humanity and of our singular loves."

Rubbing Elbows indulges in the imagined lives of certain celebrities and sometimes places these celebrities in situations that address social issues, such as racism and sexism. These poems manifest these fantasies about stars living and dead-some, like Clara Schumann, long dead. Poems such as "Conversations with Whitney over Colas" get uncomfortably close to recent deaths and checks our expectations of public lives. Some of the poems cover famous events or songs, like "El Paso," which gives voice to women hypersexualized and demonized because of their race or the tragic shooting at Pulse in 2016. And the poems that drift away from celebrity culture still address public life and collective voyeurism. Sometimes playful and sometimes painful, Rubbing Elbows gets close to some of our most beloved personalities and public life.

Flare explores the wonder, resilience, and betrayal of the body. Born from the author's experience with recurrent and escalating hearing loss and chronic pain, this poetry collection unapologetically breaks silence around invisible disability and shows us, even in struggle, there is light to be let in. While delving into topics such as loss, hope, anxiety, and faith, Flare grapples with what it truly means to be capable and to make peace with one's limitations in a society that equates disability with brokenness.

Most poems in J.M. Green's The Novice Angler have been published in both print and online literary journals and some have won local or national awards. Together these poems hold hands and dive deeper into life's murky waters. They become a tale of the guideless male who awkwardly, sometimes painfully, casts line after line hoping to catch the true meaning of manhood and masculinity. From boyhood through young adulthood, he continues to catch nothing. Only as we enter poems of family loss and abandonment do nibbles and bites appear and by the end of this short collection there is hope he has caught the big fish. A chapbook that begins with a powerful secret and ends with a powerful secret, but in two very different rivers.

Traveling with the Underground People is a hybrid collection of poetry, graphic poems, and prose, chronicling a North American Sámi diaspora. The Sámi are one people in four countries, and are the indigenous peoples of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula. At least 30,000 Sámi now live in North America. Vivian Faith Prescott's poems explore indigenous identity, transgenerational trauma, and the complexities of living far from one's cultural origins. The narrator is often mournful of this loss: "…how many grandmothers and aunties and cousins you can search for, back-and-forth in time, before the shoe-bands of your world weaken."

If I'd been charged with assembling the information placed on the gold record accompanying the Voyager Space Probe today, I would have etched something like what Drifting in Awe became on the record. While cryptic in one moment, it is quite literal in another, an obvious wrestling with both clear realities and the mysteries making up who we are in this drifting world - a place deserving awe.

In this narrative prose poem, Priscilla, home health aide, college dropout, social activist, sets out to work on her bicycle at dawn. Passing the old woolen mill, she meditates on the city's history and her family's part in its founding. As she visits her clients in their apartments, the space shuttle Columbia orbits above, sending down messages, the mayor visits the Sunshine Club, a parachutist lands in Leary Field, an AA meeting takes place in the basement of the Italian Church… Evening comes. Priscilla feeds her children. Called back to work, she suffers a long-feared bicycle accident, is taken overnight to the hospital where she has some ecstatic and revelatory thoughts about her survival. Dawn comes, the shuttle lands.

Some Other Life, a collection of poems by West Virginia writer Tracy Seffers, brings into view the deep "other life" hidden underneath the commonplace. It is a celebration of the small and unseen lives that reveal deeper truth both divine and deeply human: the poetry sings an incarnational universe.

This poetry collection reimagines the classic poetic text of the Song of Songs and considers its terrain of love and belonging in connection with how we seek out the divine today in our own backyards, literally and figuratively. The Song of Songs, found in Hebrew and Christian scripture, conveys in poetic form the intimate love between the bride and the groom, interpreted often in tradition as the human soul and the divine. The Song captures the spiritual journey of the soul toward its God through expression of the delight which the soul and the Beloved find in one another and their garden, the soul's despair in the absence of the Beloved and the consequent experience of loss and pain, and finally the union of the soul and Beloved. This poetry chapbook is inspired by a garden and its residents, a historic drought, a wildfire and its aftermath, experience of the divine in the everyday, and the Song of Songs. Several of the poems echo moments found in the Song and other scripture, and the poems are generally arranged according to the arc of the Song.

Proposition at the Walk-In Infinity Chamber by Bobbie Lee Lovell is a collection of poems about relationships, decision-making and resilience. Pivotal moments from dating to divorce are infused with ekphrastic (visual art) and speculative (science fiction/fantasy) elements, including fairy tale characters. The language is artful but accessible, and the tone ranges from wistful to brazen. Throughout the book, the theme of "the edge" recurs. Several poems describe the precarious beauty found at great heights. Others present "the edge" as a metaphorical line between despair and hope, union and separation. This book is for art lovers, hikers, dreamers and anyone who seeks healing and growth - especially those who have struggled with societal pressures or for self-fulfillment inside or outside the context of a relationship.

Jesse Minkert's Rookland is a place people may go if they want to. Some of the locals rise from the soil in costumes, if dirt could be considered a costume. If a body could be considered a form of transportation, then Rookland is full of the most dangerous rides. Her Majesty loses sleep from the exploits of the Heir Apparent. Melanie grinds up tiger moths to flavor her chocolate milk. Club girls party through generations. Belinda's face is a rainbow, and Collin can't stop washing his hands. Greta sees her childhood end. Bennie has wardrobe problems during a concert. The old man feels himself being chewed. Discord on the plaza leads to burning clouds in the streets. Someone spills his drink on a leather seat cushion. Someone else dies and invites his children to inspect his corpse. Marjorie fires up her kiln. A woman named Diana swims through perilous waters. A woman named Christa explodes over Cape Canaveral. A man reads a certain destiny in his sons. The magnificent chaos of Sylvia's hair gets a detailed explanation. Timmy hides the evidence far from the trail. Not all the folks here are people. Hares and vixens run for Her Majesty. The Percheron mare! Robot arms! Mrs. Capuchin has tea with Marv the Constrictor. A shot from the cab of a pickup kills a doe. Everybody hates Linda's dog. Sharks, jellyfish, palominos on locoweed, and of course the rooks, who snatch Timmy's spoor from the wind. The citizens of Rookland wrestle with families, loved ones, their bodies, their minds and the world. They fail and succeed, but for the most part keep trying. They slither, dance, crawl and fly in language that can only have come from the mind of this poet. To travel to Rookland, this book can be your ticket. On the other hand, maybe you're there already. Buy a ticket anyway.

Serving as an American Red Cross disaster services and labor co-op volunteer for almost twenty years put poet Tim Skeen in contact with a unique cast of characters-from the instructors to his fellow volunteers to those people in crisis he assisted. The poems in Reward capture moments from that service and also address the more personal side of loss, grief and recovery as the poet writes of his father and brother and his own path from youth to middle age.

An asphalt-scorching first collection, Constant Traffic navigates the unmappable human condition, or what David Kirby called "the hills and valleys of the mind and heart," while veering onto side roads through various styles and aesthetics-from thoughtful conceits and narratives to reverberant dramatic monologues and songs-to both marvel at the scenery and scoop up the occasional carcass.