Grief Poetry

A collection of honest, fierce and beautiful poems about being a mother, from pregnancy and birth to growing up and leaving home. Curated by acclaimed anthology Ana Sampson, Night Feeds and Morning Songs examines motherhood from all angles, capturing the mess and the madness, to the joy and the wonder....

In this urgent outpouring of American voices, our poets speak to us as they shelter in place, addressing our collective fear, grief, and hope from eloquent and diverse individual perspectives.

Quietly reflective, the beautifully written poems in this slim volume offer a welcome respite from the noisy insistence of modern life. The language, now simple and direct, now rich in associations, double-meanings, and imagery, has its own natural rhythm and appeal regardless of subject and rhyme.

I wrote most of these poems when I was in a bad place, a dark state of mind that eased its hold when I wrote them down, and so these poems were created, they maybe disturbing for most and very intense, but if you have been in a dark place too, you may understand.

In the ethereal verses of "THINGS," listeners are invited to delve into the enigmatic depths of complex emotions, intricately entwined with the suffocating grip of anxiety. As the words unfold, evocative language weaves a tapestry that reveals the hidden realities of navigating life's tumultuous terrain while anxiety relentlessly seeps into every crevice of our rationale.

Cancerwords is a record of Glenn Peirson’s three-year battle with a rare sinus cancer. Diagnosed at stage 4, Glenn did his elegant utmost to stay here for his wife and children, the joys of his life. As mother of this remarkable man for all seasons, I was seized by a need to write poetry and take photos on my prayer-walks. These media became my prayer forms. For me, they reached through the madness to a silence where pain is transformed into resilience. I was sustained and enabled to be what Glenn, Mary, Theodora, and Henry needed me to be.

Naomi Shihab Nye has spent thirty-five years traveling the world to lead writing workshops and inspire students of all ages. In her newest collection Transfer she draws on her Palestinian American heritage, the cultural diversity of her home in Texas, and her extensive travel experiences to create a poetry collection that attests to our shared humanity.

With his dazzling ability to set words spinning, Amit Majmudar brings us poems that sharpen both wit and knives as he examines our "life in solitary". Equally engaged with human history and the human heart, Majmudar transfigures identity from a locus of captivity to the open field of his liberation....

The poems of Dear October chronicle the evolution of the natural world and a daughter caring for her mother during the last year of her life. Months of the final year act as the scaffolding for the collection as they reflect on the 12 moons. The spirit of home, family, and mother-daughter relationship intertwine with the diversity of culture and ecology in Northern New Mexico.

This full collection of 56 poems reflecting on the concept of self, loss, fragility, and the constructs we must create in order to face the transient nature of life was named a finalist in the National Poetry Series, The New Issues Poetry Prize, The Four Way Books Intro Prize, and others.

John Foy’s newest collection is a tour de force of formal poetry, offering a blend of wit, cleverness, and deftness. Working in the lineage of poets like Billy Collins, Robert Frost, Frank O’Hara, W. H. Auden, and Elizabeth Bishop, Foy probes everyday experiences to generate compassionate, clever, and deeply knowing verse.

In this poetry collection "Ways to Say Goodbye", Anne Kellas takes the listener through dream sequences, abstract and imagistic poems and deeply personal poems of loss. The effect is a cumulative building of a quiet world of reflective resilience as the poet tries out possible ways to do what is almost impossible – to love and to say goodbye.

From the author's leather-bound book kept locked at the base of his bed, we journey through New York City, chilled farmlands and isolated cabins in the woods. Calloway's solid masculine approach is refreshingly original. We have all felt the warmth of the world around us and we have all felt the cold. This author holds our hand as he leads us down rich passageways of the psyche.

In Conversation is a personal milestone in Janice Whyne's journey of rediscovering her creative self. She sees poetry as a means of self-expression. A conduit and a safe space for our emotions, feelings and lived experiences. The poems in In Conversation began their lives with a word(s) exchanged in conversation or that captured her attention in something she was listening to or viewing. She regards them as articulations of the said and unsaid, with the poetic voice in them not always hers but rather an expression or interpretation of the voice(s) of others.

In this collection, explore a variety of poems depicting a time of loneliness, growth, and self reflection. How change can often be unwanted, and the feelings that transpire with overcoming it.

These verses twist trauma and grief into self-loving peace, a therapy cushion of words and doodle artwork. Come feel the dark so we can see the light again.

Shards are the chipped-off pieces and eroded grains of myself that I collected from my mid-20s, when I was almost homeless again (yes, again), through my 30s, when I fought through that poverty, depression, and grief to find myself as a survivor. A poet doesn't just love you for a moment. She lets you puncture her skin with the way you feel, lets it heal, and then rubs it now and then to feel you again. This debut collection of poetry by a Cleveland, Ohio artist tells stories of traumas, breaking cycles, sexy romances, and the bond between the poet and listener.

Written during the first nine months of the Covid-19 lockdowns, Wisps of Life is a work of heart. The lonely heart. The grieving heart. The hopeful heart. The joyful heart reunited. It is dreams. Dreams on hold. Dreams come true. Dreams reborn. It is the memory of dreams. It is a study in being human. We human thinkers have been around for thousands of generations. We are the products of infinite permutations of culture, religion, civilization, and perception. Yet, there have only ever been a handful of emotions to go around.

In the footsteps of Charles Bukowski comes Hosho McCreesh's magnum opus of drunk poetry. Mammoth in size and scope, DrunkSkull books is pleased to release the audiobook version of A Deep & Gorgeous Thirst, a drunken, epic collection about death and love that is unlike any of McCreesh's previous work.

The story of Belvie Rooks and Dedan Gills, their journey and their transformation, is “as old as eternity and as new as now.” As individuals, Dedan and Belvie were already activists, mentors, and voices for justice, but in their union, they became an even greater force for compassion and love.