My third poetry collection, Church Ladies, will be released June 2nd from Fernwood Press.
I started writing this book sometime in 2016, after reading 50 Women Every Christian Should Know by Michelle DeRusha, a book of short biographies of women from church history. I was fascinated by the rich and diverse history of women in the church, and of my own place in it. I cover a pretty wide range of women, from the mystics like Julian of Norwich to Ruth Graham Bell to the unnamed Church Ladies who teach children Jesus Loves Me every week, a veritable choir of voices raised (most of them) to praise God.
You can preorder your copy on the Fernwood or Barclay Press website (Amazon will have it starting May 29th).
Sample Poem:
Hannah More, the First Sunday School Lady
The only Bible in town props a flower pot
in the deserted parish.
Children are buried without ceremony.
Farmers warn “religion will ruin
the economy of harvest, of growth.”
Couldn’t be content to pile her hair on her head,
a few lemons or lemon-flowers to garnish?
Couldn’t be content to write script, stay
in town, with ladies and lords who didn’t get it?
Hannah gathers up the children first,
then mothers and fathers, teaches them
what makes a life
grow green and strong:
Scripture, sewing, cooking meat
all the way through,
And the roots of spirit sinking down,
sinking down, into the hard, unworked soil.