There Is a Field - Paperback

by Diane Kistner (Editor), Barbara Conrad (Author)

THERE IS A FIELD bears witness to many voices, many lives-and the interconnectedness of those lives with one another and with the natural world. Woven in the collection are the author's personal stories, ghostly memories and reflections on social and environmental concerns. Some of these poems dazzle, some burn. Whether the focus is a trust fall fiasco at summer camp, a landfill on Green Turtle Cay, racial realities of the '60s, a lonely whale or a bullfrog's response to urban renewal, these poems will linger past the page. "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing," said Rumi, "there is a field. I'll meet you there." In this book, the poet has created such a field.

Author Biography

Barbara Conrad is author of two previous poetry collections, Wild Plums (FutureCycle Press) and The Gravity of Color (Main Street Rag), and editor of Waiting for Soup (MSR), an anthology from her creative writing classes with homeless folks in Charlotte. Her poems have appeared in Tar River Poetry, Atlanta Review, Nine Mile, Broad River, Pembroke, Southern Women's Review, and such anthologies as Kakalak, Jacar Press and Southern Poetry Anthology. In 2015 she was a three-time finalist for the James Applewhite Prize (NC Literary Review). She continues to work with the homeless while focusing on racial and economic social justice issues.