EMPTY BOWL
Empty Bowl, an independent press founded in 1976 in the Pacific Northwest as a cooperative letterpress publisher, publishes literary anthologies, poetry, translations, essays, and occasionally fiction.
Tending the Flock
Coming September 15, Preorder now
Sally Green
For half a century Sally Green has been the caretaker of words belonging to other poets, designing and printing books and broadsides as copublisher of the award-winning Brooding Heron Press. During all those years she was also developing her own poetic voice forged from a daily immersion in meaningful work, family, community, and place. In Tending the Flock, the remarkable attention to detail that brought her praise as a letterpress printer is also present in her poems, which former Ireland Professor of Poetry Paula Meehan has called “poems of grace and wisdom,” words treated as though they matter. Whether describing daily life on Waldron Island or adopting the commonsense voice of Aunt Mabel, this is a poet of humility and compassion whose unique way of encountering the world enriches us all.
“With a deeply engaging and sure-hearted touch that completely lives up to expectations, Sally Green’s poems define, span, and capture the enduring essence of life in rural Washington from every conceivable angle. Her intense connection to generations of characters, including the uniquely compelling Aunt Mabel, as well as to the natural world, gives Tending the Flock an indelible presence that brings every detail of spirit, gravity, humor, and devotion to life.” —Barry Sternlieb, author of Sole Impressions
Reconciliations
Available now.
Mistee St. Clair
“In Reconciliations, poet Mistee St. Clair grapples with identity—as daughter, mother, wife, and, perhaps most poignantly, as a person searching for the very origins of connection. The poems attend closely to the intertwined bonds of land and family, exploring them across shifting perspectives and moments in time. This is embodied grief work, alive to both messiness and wonder. It resists easy summary, instead dwelling in the vivid particulars that draw the reader back again and again.” —Erin Coughlin Hollowell, author of Every Atom and Corvus and Crater
In Reconciliations, Mistee St. Clair’s debut poetry collection, she explores the universal condition of grief. Of Tanana Athabaskan descent, St. Clair writes of the loss of a parent, first through adoption and the cultural and ancestral loss that follows, and then, in a powerful sequence of poems, of the loss of her birth father to addiction and death. She writes of the challenges of mothering her children as they become adults and of finding a new identity as her marriage ends. In facing these losses, she learns that reconciliation begins with connections: with herself, her dead father, her children, her partner, and the world. Tinged with the bittersweet, grounded in place—in poems that range in length, style, and subject—the poet’s voice is clear. These brave, honest poems don’t skim the surface; they find deeper meaning, believing in love, hope, and renewal, ultimately arriving at their own spirituality, seeing life through the twin lenses of curiosity and love, even in the midst of perpetual rain.
Of Note
Read a selected chapter, “Risking it All at Ugashik,” from Kurt Hoelting’s book Apprentice to the Wild in the latest edition of Adventures Northwest Magazine! Copies are available to be ordered physically, or viewed online at this link.
On May 6, the fifth and last season of the award-winning podcast Ten Thousand Things, hosted by Empty Bowl author Shin Yu Pai, will launch from Acast Creative Studios. Ten Thousand Things is a show about objects, how material things carry memory, identity, and story within Asian American communities. This final season expands on that idea, exploring objects as agents of personal transformation. Find the season trailer (with an on-screen audio transcript) below!
More from Empty Bowl
