Laura Jan Shore, Concrete Wolf Louis Award Winner for The Generosity of Birds
“Laura Shore’s The Generosity of Birds illuminates the fullness of life from celebration to elegy,
from birth to complicated generational grief. ‘…this has nothing to do with my mother, /… Yet there
she is, / a viridian flicker/ on the periphery of my gaze, the vibrational key /.’ Birds abound whether
center stage or in a reassuring background presence: magpie, Regent Honey
Eater, mourning dove, Brush turkey, bellbird, rainbow lorikeet, curlew, galah, and more. We see
through the lens of her Australian homeland, and her skill of ‘… witnessing without being drowned.’
An abundance of birds sustains the author and the reader with the vital and timely reminder that all
life is connected.”
—Jo Brachman,, author of Prayers to a Small Stone
Storms
Lightening ruptures the sky. Rain sutures
the soil. Windows distort runnels of wet
into prisms of dull light.
On the veranda, a half-drowned magpie
eyes me with an indignant ruffle of feathers.
Our road is a river now. Two pelicans glide by.
Banked at the verge, a tangle of branches.
Wading in, water laps my knees,
all swirl and swill.
Wind slithers
beneath my collar, billows my jacket.
I breathe the sea’s dark breath,
salt crusting my tongue until
head flung back, face to the spitting sky,
I mimic the curlew’s cry.
Don’t give me shelter, tear open the roof
of my skull. Flood all my plans.
Toss me like flotsam
on the waves. I thrive in the tumult.
Storms remind me—
even alone, I’m not alone.
Born in the UK, raised in the US, and now living in Australia, Laura Jan Shore’s poetry
collections include Breathworks (Dangerously Poetic Press, 2002), Water over Stone (winner of
IP Picks Best Poetry, Interactive Press, 2011), and Afterglow (Interactive Press, 2020). She’s also
the author of the YA novel, The Sacred Moon Tree, (Bradbury Press,1986) nominated for the
Washington Irving Children’s Book Award. Her work has been published in anthologies and
literary journals on four continents including: The Griffith Review, Magma, Southword,
and The Best Australian Poems 2013. In 2019, she received her MFA in Poetry from Pacific University.
Visit Laura's page at ConcreteWolf.com
Purchase Laura's collection from your favorite retailer:
Scot Siegel, MoonPath Press Sally Albiso Award Winner for Tender Currencies
Scot Siegel’s Tender Currencies is a book so deeply, so beautifully imbued in place that it
almost has a piney scent, a weather pattern, a distinctive gaze. Siegel has a sage, honest voice
that explores the difficult but winsome territory between solace and desolation. Whether
grounding us in playa, lake, and canyon, or in the expanses of history, time, and love, these
poems remind us to root ourselves where we are, as who we are. “This could be a new way to /
see yourself in the world,” he writes. Indeed, Siegel’s remarkable book gives us many crucial
and loving new ways to see the world itself as well.
—Annie Lighthart, author of Pax
Lake Effect
The night wind unwinds
rousing our neighbors’ voices
The heatwave breaking
Remember the lake?
Stars swarming like caddisflies
kissing the surface?
The wind did not sleep
moving endlessly between
overheated rooms
of aspen and pine
seeking schist or granite slab
a place to lie down
Let’s find some relief
slip into bathymetric daze
let the breeze barter
uncharted stars for
night swimmers far from the dock—
let minnows caress our toes
Scot Siegel, recipient of the 2024 Sally Albiso Poetry Book Award, is a city planner, educator,
and author of three chapbooks and four full-length poetry collections, including Tender Currencies.
Previous volumes include The Constellation of Extinct Stars and Other Poems (2016) and
Thousands Flee California Wildflowers (2012) from Salmon Poetry. Siegel works
with Writing the Land, which pairs poets with land trusts nationwide. He received the Oregon
Poetry Association Poet’s Choice Award, and the late US Poet Laureate Philip Levine
recognized Siegel’s long poem “Pages Torn From a Schoolmarm’s Diary” as Finalist with
Honorable Mention in Nimrod International’s 2012 Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize Competition..
Visit Scot's page at MoonPathPress.com
Purchase Scot's collection from your favorite retailer:
