Showing titles in Death, Grief & Loss

This serves a collection of poems written by service members that were deployed to Iraq. These poems were written during deployments overseas.

Indecency is boldly and carefully executed and perfectly ragged. In these poems, Justin Phillip Reed experiments with language to explore inequity and injustice and to critique and lament the culture of white supremacy and the dominant social order. Political and personal, tender, daring, and insightful - the author unpacks his intimacies, weaponizing poetry to take on masculinity, sexuality, exploitation, and the prison industrial complex and unmask all the failures of the structures into which society sorts us.

Wild Hope is Donna Ashworth's powerful new collection of wisdom to help us find hope, peace, self-acceptance and inspiration on the days we feel worn down, helpless or sad. Written with love and understanding, Donna reminds us that amidst our daily struggles and constant outpourings of bad news we have so much to hope for, and that every one of us can play a part, big or small, in making the world a better place.

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.

In this particular collection, I present to you glimpses into memories about what used to be, who we once were, what we once held dear, and of the desires yet to come. Why is it that some memories quietly fade away while others forever haunt? What if even the moon has memories? Could it recall how we got here? Please do remember us favorably after we have all gone…

If Ollie Schminkey’s Dead Dad Jokes asks the question, “What was it like to watch my father die?”, Where I Dry the Flowers asks “How did watching someone die teach me how to live?” This unrestrained and raw sophomore collection explores themes of grief, healing, and forgiveness while refusing to sacrifice the hard truths that come with addiction, caretaking, and the death of a loved one. Ollie opens their heart to listeners and tells them that these emotions are okay, no matter how conflicting and confusing they may be.

The words you are about to hear have been ongoing for many, many years. They are not written to make you feel bad for me; they are written more as a lesson to myself. The words were never prethought but always came from some place within me forcibly picking up a pen and putting their utterances down at once. It was as if it was a command from the very depths of me, a strength in me that has always been there. Someone once said it was a goddess in me, the strong goddess who drives us on till we see the truth.

Smoke is a collection of poems written over the course of two years. It is portrait of grief and the courage it takes to sit with it. It is an account of what it feels like to be intimate with sadness and loneliness. It is a portrait of healing. Smoke is documentation of growth and its grueling processes. It begins in grief and ends in joy. It is a book where the black girl rescues herself.

Lamenting Sam is a raw, luminous collection of poetry born from a mother’s deepest heartbreak—the sudden loss of her 25-year-old son. Artist, writer, and seeker Kelly Jo Terry transforms unimaginable grief into a series of intimate, courageous reflections that map the terrain of mourning, memory, and the slow return of light. Before tragedy altered the landscape of her life, Kelly Jo spent years nurturing children as an early childhood educator and later painting portraits and landscapes for a devoted roster of clients. But in February 2020, when her beloved son died, the colors ...

Outside Gravity - Poems from a Personal Journey by Paul Burnore contains lyrical, crafted poems about loss, grief, and coming to terms with both death and life. These poems are seasoned by an international life and close observation about what really matters. In Outside Gravity, many poems grapple with the loss of a young son and the nearly crippling grief that followed. But this loss is balanced with broader reflections about death, along with a rebalancing of life containing love and the splendor of nature.

“A rare feat for any book of poems, let alone a debut, in that the lines, wrought with such deft precision and care, mark the sum total of a life richly lived and felt at the seat of poetry...These poems care, first and foremost, for what they write of and through, which is a much needed—yet...

‘Charly is social media’s answer to Carol Ann Duffy’ Sunday Times STYLE [Charly] is turning a new generation on to poetry’ The Telegraph From the bestselling author of She Must Be Mad comes the second book of poetry and prose from Charly Cox. What is love? Baby don’t hurt me… but...

From the Inside of Corners by Taran Ailey is a poignant collection of poetry and prose that delves into the raw and intricate emotions of being human. Through vivid and heartfelt verse, Ailey explores the depths of grief, heartbreak, loss, life, and love, capturing the nuances of our most profound experiences.

In Trace Evidence, the urgent follow-up to his award-winning debut Into Each Room We Enter without Knowing, Charif Shanahan continues his piercing meditations on the intricacies of mixed-race identity, queer desire, time, mortality, and the legacies of anti-Blackness in the US and abroad. With rich lyricism, power, and tenderness, Trace Evidence centers the racial periphery and excavates the vestiges of our violent colonial past in the most intimate aspects of our lives.

Winner of the 2023 Trio Award, Christian Gullette's critically acclaimed Coachella Elegy explores the queer promised lands and poolside utopias of the American West even as they are threatened by environmental destruction. With precision and clarity, Gullette's poems wander the desert landscape of California, reveling in its beauties and challenging its sacred myths. His speaker seamlessly transports us from a hospital room where his husband battles cancer to the Palm Springs oasis where the vacationing couple celebrates survival.

“You are told to believe in one paradise / and then there is the paradise you come to know,” begins Rick Barot. What follows is an account of the rich and thorny valley between those poles. Moving the Bones dwells in liminal spaces—of love and memory, the pandemic’s singular domesticity, a serene cemetery of ancestral plots, dawn. In precise and tender verse, Barot captures the particularities of being in the middle of one’s life, reflecting on the joys and sorrows of the past and confronting the inevitabilities that lie ahead.

Dan O’Brien’s powerful companion to Our Cancers catalogs the recovery of a cancer survivor, whose wife has recently survived her own cancer, as he returns to his daily life while raising a young daughter. This prose-poem sequence is a true survivor’s notebook, usingand the tools of memoir to evoke how disaster can constellate our past, present, and future.

A parent's worst nightmare is to receive the news that their child is gone. The grief that follows is overwhelming. Through her love of poetry, Wanda Weathersby shares her journey of grief after the death of her precious son Calvin. Her journey shows the power of celebrating the memories and the importance of a strong support system to help through these difficult times. If you have lost a child or a loved one, experience the healing and love that God poured out for this mom during these difficult times and be inspired to find your own path of healing with him.

When the nights grow longer, and we spend time curled up by the fire, we seek out protection from the unknown. Seeking out times of merriment and joy, yet there is always darkness in the light. Embark on a journey into a collection of urban dark poetry portraying areas of the paranormal, afflictions of the heart and mind, and questions we all face in life. There are also tales of death, love, and the reaper of death himself.

Alice Teeter's Book of Revelations is gentle and brutal, devoid of the supernatural and full of nature. Her poetry gives us a recipe, a warning, a hint at what is to come.