I cannot say enough about the generosity of Dayna Patterson, not to mention the incredible quality of her beautiful poetry. I am honored to share her review of A Godless Ascends just published by Mom Egg Review. If you are not familiar with Patterson’s work, please visit her website linked below.

Dayna Patterson is a photographer, textile artist, and irreverent bardophile. She’s the author of O Lady, Speak Again (Signature Books, 2023), If Mother Braids a Waterfall (Signature Books, 2020) and Titania in Yellow (Porkbelly Press, 2019). Honors include the Association for Mormon Letters Poetry Award and the 2019 #DignityNotDetention Poetry Prize judged by Ilya Kaminsky. She’s the founding editor (now emerita) of Psaltery & Lyre and a co-editor of Dove Song: Heavenly Mother in Mormon Poetry.

Here’s a sample from Patterson’s review:

“The fourth & final section, ‘Bone Music,’ leans into the difficulty of parenting adult children, who, despite being grown, remain vulnerable in an unpredictable world. The section opens with a She-God poem, ‘She-God // The Creator,’ in which the speaker-goddess dwells on the drama of birth, remembering that ‘splendor and pain,’ ‘both creator and birthed / remember      the after’ (71). In the poems that follow, this She-God poem acts as a precursor to the speaker’s son’s horrific biking accident that nearly takes his life, the mutual pain felt by mother and son during recovery, and the son’s ‘resurrection’ back into health, his rebirth into life. In the last poem, the son throws a ‘Resurrection Party’ for himself, dressed as Christ ‘with death metal makeup,’ which makes the speaker a kind of Mary, who has watched her son suffer and, miraculously, survive (96).”

Read the complete review here.

You can pre-order A Godless Ascends:

• Direct from Lithic Press (free shipping);
• or from Small Press Distribution (currently 20% off as featured in their “handpicked” section for Women’s National History Month);
• or if you’d like a signed copy with a bookmark, contact me here. Those who order signed copies before the official release date on March 19 will be entered in a drawing to win an 11×14 print of one of the paintings used as artwork in the book!

A GODLESS ASCENDS is the powerful new collection of poems by Trish Hopkinson. In this intensely personal collection, the poet’s close attention to language propels the narrative and brings its scenes to life: I see her mother writing essays in college; I see the poet telling her daughter, do not mistake urgency for love; I see her watching over her injured son in his hospital bed. These poems produce an aura of the mystical nature of making a family and keeping it together while remaining true to the poet’s creative life.

“Like the screech owl, Trish Hopkinson’s work hardens itself in order to keep its insides soft. There’s a Plathian urgency to these poems, reminding us that memory has taste buds, ancestry is complicated and life, like poetry, is grounded in physicality.” –Wendy Videlock, author of Wise to the West

Sample poems:

• Nocturne to Uterus – The Gravity of the Thing
• Uprooted – Cultural Daily, finalist for the 2021 Jack Grape Poetry Prize
• Dragonfly Daughter – Literary Mama (+Pushcart prize nomination)
• Resurrection Party – Voicemail Poems

If you’re interested in attending a reading, I’ll be featuring at several events in Colorado, Utah, and virtually. For information on upcoming events, see my Reading & Events page. I’ll update it as more events are scheduled.

Mom Egg Review is currently open for art submissions and will open for free “early bird” submissions aimed at allowing people with financial hardships to submit; paid ($3) submissions run from end of April to July 15^th). They “publish creative work on mothers, mothering, and motherhood, in all its forms. We publish pieces on the decision to mother, conception issues, pregnancy, nurturing children, working and mothering, creative work and mothering, caring for the elderly, adoptive parenting, gay parenting, single parenting, etc.” You can read more about MER and what they are looking for in my previous interview with their editor here.

For more information on how to publish book reviews, see my article on 50+ Lit Mags for Book Reviews & Author Interviews.

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