Family Poetry

Finding Light in Philadelphia is a collection of poetry and short stories that explore several existential questions and society issues. The book takes the listener on an exciting journey filled with thought-provoking questions, excitement, deep reflection, and self-evaluation.

Her son is left behind in a store by her husband. Again, and again. What is Heidi Esther gonna do to fix her husband this time? She desperately tries to go back to the bliss of ignorance in her perfect suburban marriage. But, with a new bestie, her pastor, and an unexpected coworker at her side, she comes face-to-face with what she’s left behind. And what she discovers about herself and her life leave her awake, breathless, surrounded by Kleenex, and learning from trees.

Former Young People’s Poet Laureate Naomi Shihab Nye delivers her latest collection, subtitled Poems About Families. They’re mostly focused on her relationship with her mother. Nye has a comfortable, unaffected delivery. Her voice has an unstudied tone, but, make no mistake, every syllable lands with precise intent. The poems are short and, at times, breathtakingly revealing, touching on acts of love and occasionally betrayal, on mysteries a child can never truly plumb. These snapshots come together to create a portrait of a vibrant, wounded, whole woman.

"ECHOES OF GREATNESS: Poems By Justice Ajani" invites listeners into a world where poetry becomes a bridge between generations, passions, and profound reflections. Inspired by a lineage steeped in activism, spirituality, and artistic expression, Justice Ajani's verses resonate with the echoes of his ancestors and the vibrancy of his own voice.

My latest book is called Looking Back: A Poets Journey and is my sixth poetry book in just a year and a half. It has been a very tearful and emotional time as I wrote down the pages and started looking back at some of my fans favorites and some of the poetry that made the poet you see today. I hope that you enjoy listening to them as I have enjoyed writing them for you all. Words can never express the happiness that I have inside and I want to thank you all for such a wonderful journey so far.

What My Hand Say, on one hand, is a bold unapologetic tribute to Black people living their lives in South Carolina. While on other hand, it is a palpable reckoning with the state’s weighted history. In this book, Glenis Redmond’s poems span from the 1800s to the present. The impact of going from poem to poem purposely causes emotional whiplash, as if to say welcome to the volatile place, in which “I/we have always had to live.”

Carole and Jeffery Boston Weatherford’s ancestors are among the founders of Maryland. Their family history there extends more than three hundred years, but as with the genealogical searches of many African Americans with roots in slavery, their family tree can only be traced back five generations before going dark. And so from scraps of history, Carole and Jeffery have conjured the voices of their kin, creating an often painful but ultimately empowering story of who their people were in a breathtaking book that is at once deeply personal yet all too universal.

Adnan Zakir loves table tennis. He's also colorblind, left-handed, and has a fondness for the aviation alphabet. He's super close with his sister, Aaliyah, who is a great dancer and memorizer of Quran, and he loves his little toddler brother Rizwan, who only wants to grow up and play table tennis like his big brother. All Adnan dreams of is making it to the Ultimate Table Tennis Championship in Florida, and if he qualifies for the tournament, he knows he will get to spend the Eid holiday with his cousins!

The title poem, a series of sonnet-sized Zoom meetings - a classroom, a memorial service, an encounter with a new baby in the family - finds humor and pathos in our age of social distancing and technology-induced proximity. Salter shows too how imagination collapses time and space: In “Island Diaries”, the pragmatist Robinson Crusoe meets on the beach a shipwrecked dreamer from an earlier century, Shakespeare’s Prospero.

These are a collection of poems that I wrote as a teen, young adult, newlywed wife, and mom. I hope you enjoy them, and always welcome and appreciate feedback from my listeners.

A Loving Sonnet of Passion :: Poem about Karolina Describes this exquisite girls musical presence with her violin. Her youth, yet musical ability astounds. Her passion for her instrument and what it can convey to others, shines through.

Meet the married Dads, the divorced Dads, the widowed Dads and the gay Dads; the gamblers, the firemen, the bankers, the nurses, the soldiers and the milkmen. They’re trying to guide their sons through the foothills of childhood into the bewildering uplands of adulthood. But it’s hard to know if they’re doing it right. Or what their sons’ mothers think... Wise and funny, touching and true, What We’re Teaching Our Sons is for anyone who has ever wondered how to be a grown-up.

"BARBAR [Tavshedens objekt]" er en digtsamling om brutalitet. Amina Elmi skriver om at leve med en kappet forbindelse til sin families historie, ritualer, sprog og identitet. I sine digte forsøger hun at etablere en forbindelse til alt det tabte, men tavsheden står som et tomt centrum – alt det, der ikke kan siges, fordi der ikke findes et sprog for det, eller fordi det er for smertefuldt. Det er digte om tavshed som både nødvendighed og vold. Amina Elmi (f. 1994) bliver uddannet fra Forfatterskolen til sommer. "BARBAR [Tavshedens objekt]" er hendes debut.

The co-author of Watch Us Rise pens a novel in verse about all the good and bad that comes with middle school, growing up girl, and the strength of family that gets you through it. Beatrice Miller may have a granny’s name (her granny's, to be more specific), but she adores her Mamaw and her mom, who give her every bit of wisdom and love they have. But the summer before seventh grade, Bea wants more than she has, aches for what she can't have, and wonders what the future will bring.

Honeybee is a collection of raw, honest, and intimate conversations with oneself that lead you on a journey of reflection. By writing truthfully about the intricacies of her experiences, Rideau’s first collection of work is one that will speak to the very depths of those who read it, inspiring a will to question, heal and empower.

In this radiant debut collection, Cathryn Shea constructs a world as delicate, colorful, and sharp as an autumn leaf yet as stable as the ancient tree it’s fallen from. Harnessing evocative imagery that illuminates the inherent spirituality within even the frailest human gestures, these poems reach across generations, genders, and cultures to give voice to the kind of unabashed gratitude that lights up our darkest edges.

This exciting collection of free-form poetry with over 40 poems by Susan J. Farese, MSN, RN, is a sharing of both professional and personal thoughts and feelings. Susan is a strong advocate of the creative use of poetry to express the wonderment, frustration, dedication, and the love of nurses for their profession and their patients.

Christian Morgenstern kombiniert in seinem Werk ernste, gedankenvolle Lyrik und groteske Verse mit ironisch-skeptischem Witz. In seinen Werken ist die Frage nach dem Sinn der menschlichen Existenz sowie der Versuch, den Mensch zu sich selbst zu führen, verankert. Er nimmt Sinnbilder wörtlich, wandelt Klangbilder in sinnfreier Analogie und grotesker Umdeutung ab. Interpretiert werden Morgensterns Texte von Meistern ihres Fachs, die dabei genau den richtigen Ton treffen - gefühlvoll, pointiert, ironisch und vor allem facettenreich.

The Dry Valley encapsulates one woman’s relationship with herself, her alcoholic spouse, and the world, in three different Saskatchewan landscapes. The poems offer a fascinating interplay between mindful explorations of self and immersions in the challenging complexities of interpersonal relationships, social issues, and meaningful engagement with the environment.

In We Inherit What the Fires Left, award-winning poet William Evans embarks on a powerful new collection that explores the lived experience of race in the American suburbs and what dreams and injuries are passed from generation to generation. Fall under the spell of Evans' boldly intimate, wise, and emotionally candid voice in these urgent, electrifying poems. This eloquent collection explores not only what these inheritances are composed of, but what price the bearer must pay for such legacies, and the costly tolls exacted on both body and spirit.