The Red Thread

Elizabeth McKim (described in Poetry Flash as "powerfully womanly . . . yet devilish, daring") is a pioneer performance poet. In her bawdy and intimate fifth collection, she looks back—and forward—as she ages, in poems connected by The Red Thread, a bright motif in which all is interwoven and always beats to the rhythm of the human heart.The poems in The Red Thread wind their way insistently through time and love and the hushed confusion of family secrets; between beloved sisters, daughter and granddaughter, through music, weddings, the blessing of carnal knowledge and across borders and checkpoints: India and the Middle East, where love letters float in the wind in which the innocent body is assaulted and a lover dies in a woman’s arms. Knitting together the heart, mind and body of one of our keenest and most tender observers, The Red Thread is a work of uncommon power.Elizabeth McKim is a poet whose roots are in the oral tradition of song, story and chant. She performs and teaches in collaboration with artists, musicians and expressive therapists in the U.S. and internationally. Known for four previous books of poetry: Burning Through, Body India, Family Salt and Boat of the Dream, she has published in some of the nation’s most prestigious magazines, including Ploughshares, River Styx, Poetry, Painted Bride, Drumvoices and Epoch. She has been a visiting poet in hundreds of schools and colleges, and has been the Artist-in-Residence for six years at the European Graduate School for Expressive Arts Therapy in Switzerland. She is the co-author of Beyond Words: Writing Poems with Children, a pioneering text which has been in print for more than two decades. She is a member of the National Faculty of Lesley University in the Department of Creative Arts in Learning and lives in greater Boston, Massachusetts.