FINALIST FOR THE CHARLOTTE MEW PRIZEThe speakers in this chapbook honor our clumsy, loving, mysterious relationship to the natural world—to fox, horse, and spider. A deceased mother returns to her daughter, in a dream, to say, “stop/ wasting time.” As if in response, one narrator declares that she sleeps “in a cramped bedroom/ with my lover and two dogs.” Violence and loss prompt thoughtful lyrics on navigating grief.—Robin Becker, judge of the Charlotte Mew Prize and author of The Black Bear Inside MeIn Jean A. Kingsley’s moving collection Low-water’s Edge, nature itself comes to a full stop to listen to a world in the throes of constant change. Be it personal or global, here are the bruises and scars that accumulate on body and soul over a lifetime spent negotiating the daily vicissitudes of danger and beauty, love and loss. From the vast patchwork of a night sky to “dark birds that cannot fly” and the almost stifling intimacy of a backyard that whispers “tend to me, tend to me” these poems invite the reader into the endless dance of life and death where “Somewhere brown cows bow to no one/while a mourner idly adjusts her veil.”—Tina Schumann, author of Praising the Paradox, Requiem, and A Patrimony of FuguesLow-water’s Edge is a fascinating amalgam of disparate ideas that forms a complete universe of the author’s travails and hard-won truths. Honest and raw, Kingsley’s poems weave together nature and nurture into a world where grief and happiness stand side-by-side. —Kate Carroll de Gutes, author of Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear
