Growing Old in Poetry

Normal0falsefalsefalseEN-USJAX-NONE Sydney Lea and Fleda Brown, past poets laureate of their respective states and both nationally recognized writers who’ve given their lives to their art, have conspired to write an unusual book of essays. They’ve picked a wide variety of topics and headed out as they wished with each, covering a lot of territory, both artistic and memoiristic. Some of the pieces, like “Wild Animals,” are downright silly; some, like “Sex,” “Music,” and “Food,” are provocative; some, like “Clothes,” “Sports,” and “Houses,” appear ordinary but are ultimately revealing. The final essay offers, from each, a personal look at how a poet lives and writes in this troubling time. The excitement of this collection is in the details—how lives are lived and poems written over time, and at last, an entire body of work as witness.

Sydney Lea of Brattleboro, VT

Sydney Lea was Vermont's 2011-2015 Poet Laureate. He has published numerous books in multiple genres, among them Pursuit of a Wound, a finalist for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. He is the founder of New England Review and has been awarded Rockefeller, Fulbright, and Guggenheim fellowships. He has taught at Dartmouth, Yale, Wesleyan, Vermont, and Middlebury colleges, as well as at Switzerland's Franklin College and Budapest's National Hungarian University. His stories, poems, essays, and criticism have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, and many other periodicals, as well as in more than fifty anthologies. He lives in Newbury, Vermont, and he is active both in community literacy efforts and in environmental conservation.

Fleda Brown

Fleda Brown is professor emerita at the University of Delaware and was poet laureate of Delaware from 2001 to 2007. The Woods Are On Fire: New & Selected Poems was chosen by Ted Kooser for his University of Nebraska poetry series in 2017. Fleda has nine previous collections of poems; her work has appeared twice in The Best American Poetry and has won a Pushcart Prize, the Felix Pollak Prize, the Philip Levine Prize, and the Great Lakes Colleges New Writers Award. She has twice been a finalist for the National Poetry Series. Her memoir, Driving With Dvorak, was published in 2010 by the University of Nebraska Press. She now lives with her husband, Jerry Beasley, in Traverse City, Michigan, and is on the faculty of the Rainier Writing Workshop, a low-residency MFA program in Tacoma, Washington.

(Photo: Fleda Brown)

Marketing & Publicity

Radio and print interviews with authors in planningn stage
Postcard mailing and advertising in February to announce book launch in April
Launch party at PoemCity in Montpelier, Vermont and touring state in April for National Poetry month
AWP pre-publicity galley giveaway at Tampa Convention

Publisher: Green Writers Press

Imprint: Green Writers Press

BISACs:

HUMOR / Form/ Essays (HUM003000)
HUMOR / Form/ Essays (HUM003000)
LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Essays (LCO010000)