Low-water’s Edge

FINALIST FOR THE CHARLOTTE MEW PRIZE The speakers in this chapbook honor our clumsy, loving, mysterious relationship to the natural world-to fox, horse, and spider. A deceased mother returns to her daughter, in a dream, to say, "stop/ wasting time." As if in response, one narrator declares that she sleeps "in a cramped bedroom/ with my lover and two dogs." Violence and loss prompt thoughtful lyrics on navigating grief.
-Robin Becker, judge of the Charlotte Mew Prize and author of The Black Bear Inside Me In Jean A. Kingsley's moving collection Low-water's Edge, nature itself comes to a full stop to listen to a world in the throes of constant change. Be it personal or global, here are the bruises and scars that accumulate on body and soul over a lifetime spent negotiating the daily vicissitudes of danger and beauty, love and loss. From the vast patchwork of a night sky to "dark birds that cannot fly" and the almost stifling intimacy of a backyard that whispers "tend to me, tend to me" these poems invite the reader into the endless dance of life and death where "Somewhere brown cows bow to no one/while a mourner idly adjusts her veil."
-Tina Schumann, author of Praising the Paradox, Requiem, and A Patrimony of Fugues Low-water's Edge is a fascinating amalgam of disparate ideas that forms a complete universe of the author's travails and hard-won truths. Honest and raw, Kingsley's poems weave together nature and nurture into a world where grief and happiness stand side-by-side.
-Kate Carroll de Gutes, author of Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear