BooksChatter: ☀☄ Night Ringing

Thank you for joining us on the Virtual Book Tour for Night Ringing, a Poetry collection by Laura Foley (11 January 2016, Headmistress Press, 108 pages).

Don't miss our interview with author Laura Foley.

PREVIEW: Check out the book's synopsis, a video of the author giving a reading of her poetry, and the excerpt below. Read various with Amazon Look Inside.

"Foley’s voice rings with quiet authority undercut by calamity, examining a life so extraordinary, she seems to have lived several people’s lives, setting a high bar for poetic craft she meets, in great mystery perfectly expressed in the tiny, quotidian, “spent matches pressed on wet pavement,” to soulful beauty, “as wind lifts/every shining wave”; in wisdom rooted in humor, from the deliciously funny “Flunking Jung,” to self-deprecating wit, misreading “poetic” as “pathetic,” reminding us wisdom is love, grown from self-compassion."—April Ossmann, author of Anxious Music

Comment on our post and follow the tour where you will be able to read other excerpts (☀), interviews (ℚ), reviews (✍) and guest blog posts (✉).

Synopsis | Author Poetry Reading Event | Teaser | Author Q&A | About the Author | Tour Stops

Synopsis

“I revel in the genius of simplicity” Laura Foley writes as she gives us in plain-spoken but deeply lyrical moments, poems that explore a life filled with twists and turns and with many transformations. Through it all is a search for a fulfilling personal and sexual identity, a way to be most fully alive in the world. From multicultural love affairs through marriage with a much older man, through raising a family, through grief, to lesbian love affairs, Night Ringing is the portrait of a woman willing to take risks to find her own best way. And she does this with grace and wisdom. As she says: “All my life I’ve been swimming, not drowning.”

"I love the words and white space of poetry. I love stories even more. In this collection, Laura Foley evokes stories of crystallized moments, of quiet and overpowering emotion, of bathtubs and lemon chicken. The author grows up on the pages, comes of age, and reconciles past with present. Almost. Try to put the book down between poems to savor each experience. Try, but it won’t be easy."—Joni B. Cole, author of Toxic Feedback, Helping Writers Survive and Thrive

Teaser: Excerpt

Perfectly Chilled

The storm's a blizzard and Dad
calls me at Mom's to ask
if I think we should go.
I'm twelve, its Christmas vacation,
so I say Yes, and we ride the slippery highway,
snow obliterating vision,
police closing the road behind us.
When he stops to call ahead,
his head is all we see
in the buried phone booth,
but the snow gods are on our side —
at the hotel, we're the only guests,
Dad, his gorgeous Swiss lover,
my classmate-friend and I,
snow-bound waiters with nothing to do
but serve the four of us,
and I love it, the box lunches,
days alone with my friend
on the soft and empty ski slopes,
evenings playing Scrabble —
and New Year's with Dad,
his bottle of Champagne
on the window ledge disappearing,
dropping down a twelve-foot snowdrift,
Dad cursing, laughing, relaxed
as he never was with Mother,
retrieving his celebratory wine,
chilled to perfection.

Night Ringing
Available NOW!

About the Author

Laura Foley is the author of five poetry collections. The Glass Tree won the Foreword Book of the Year Award, Silver, and was a Finalist for the New Hampshire Writer’s Project, Outstanding Book of Poetry. Joy Street won the Bi-Writer’s Award.

Her poems have appeared in journals and magazines including Valparaiso Poetry Review, Inquiring Mind, Pulse Magazine, Poetry Nook, Lavender Review, The Mom Egg Review and in the British Aesthetica Magazine. She won Harpur Palate’s Milton Kessler Memorial Poetry Award and the Grand Prize for the Atlanta Review’s International Poetry Contest.

Laura Foley holds graduate degrees in English Literature from Columbia University. Trained in chaplaincy through the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, she volunteers in hospitals and prisons, and is a certified Shri Yoga Instructor. She lives in the woody hills of Pomfret, Vermont with her partner Clara Giménez, and three big dogs.

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