NH Poetry Census 2021 

In December, I conducted a 2021 NH Poetry Census to pin down how much creative production is happening in the Granite State. (I suspected a ton, but it’s so much more impactful captured in a font, typed up in a list.)

Well, the findings are in and they are outstanding: 28 books and 215+ individual poem publications in literary magazines, newspapers, and on blogs, as self-reported by the state’s writers.

So what’s all the hype about publication?

It’s not the high-sugar buzz it might initially seem.

Publication is as much a sign of a writer’s relationship with themselves as are the starting-out phases of invention and prewriting. How we treat ourselves as we start a new project is not separate from how we treat ourselves when we finish.

Publishing a book or a magazine piece is, from a mindful writing perspective, indicative of writing well-being—of a healthy internal relationship between writer and their writing.

It shows trust and self-compassion—especially important writing and living during a global pandemic, now into year two. That’s why as state poet laureate and as a mindful writing specialist, I’m 100% about supporting all phases of writing, not overly valuing any particular phase.

Most authors will tell you they still recall their very first acceptance. (I was sixteen years old and had won a poetry contest sponsored by the Maine Center for the Arts—a poem I’d composed on my pink-ruffled, white-spired canopy bed.) The Yes Glow continues, no matter how many publications a writer racks up, and in 2021, boy, did we ever need moments of glow.

So on December 29, I hosted a Virtual Champagne: Poets and Publication Party. The Zoom screen was filled with faces of New Hampshire’s poets, those scheduled to read that night and those who didn’t win the lottery (necessary because of sheer number of published writers) but who charitably showed up to support their fellow authors, plus guests—publishers, family members, fans, friends—from other parts of the United States and abroad.

We honored every NH poet’s achievement, starting with the courage it takes to hit the Submit button.

We celebrated the creative vitality of the state: its bookstores, poetry society, publishers, readings, writing groups, arts organizations, and other networks.

It’s my hope (our hope) that you check out these poets’ wonderful work from 2021. Ask your local library to purchase a copy by a resident or someone who lives one town over (the Census includes where each writer resides). Explore the links provided on how to obtain books. Plus, we hope to see you on our 2022 NH Poetry Census. Send a poem or two out today!

Below is a list of poetry books published by NH residents; for a complete list, including all literary journal, newspaper, and magazine publications, see my blog.

Alexandria Peary
NH Poet Laureate
January 6, 2022

Books

John-Michael Albert. Music. Marble Kite Press, 2021. Resident of Portsmouth. Purchase info: $20.00 – E-mail John-Michael Albert directly.

Synopsis: A suite of 76 narrative poems on the effect of (primarily classical) music, gleaned from the experiences of the author and his friends over the last 70 years. Happy, sad; silly, sexy; formal, experimental—all the things that fill a life of “three-score and ten” in the last half of the 20th century.

Sarah Alcott Anderson. We Hold On To What We Can. Resident of Exeter. Purchase info: $20.00, available at Loom Press.

Synopsis: In this debut collection of poems, Sarah Alcott Anderson of Exeter, N.H., explores love, longing, loss, marriage, children, and place through her own experiences. She writes, “In mostly plain spoken poems, I explore interior and exterior landscapes—from childhood to motherhood, New England to Ireland—in the hope of honoring that we are here right now.”

Mary Anker and Will Grant. an unlikely conversation. Piscataqua Press, 2021. Resident of Portsmouth. Purchase info: $10.00. Ingram.

Synopsis: An unlikely conversation is fun, deep, and tender.  A collaboration between an English teacher and a former student features short poems exchanged over six years and includes artwork from two other former students.

Bill Burtis. Liminal. Nine Mile Books, 2021. Resident of Exeter. Purchase info: $16.00 from Nine Mile Books & Literary Magazines.

Synopsis: “Many, if not all of these eloquent poems occur at borders, open doorways, thresholds, boundaries, the confounding and holy places where we begin to leave something behind, without fully comprehending what we’re losing, and where we move ahead with no real certainty of what we’re going to find. In this gift of a book, the first poem is adamant that “It is in the nature of angels/not to show their wings.”  Mekeel McBride

Bill Chatfield. We Are Stardust: the universe in verse. Peterborough Poetry Project, 2021. Resident of Peterborough. Purchase info: Retail price = $14.00.  Library price (includes shipping), through March of 2022, is $8.40 from the Peterborough Poetry Project.

Synopsis: We Are  Stardust is for students and other readers interested in the cosmos, with illustrations from NASA and over two pages of internet and print resources, We Are Stardust explores black holes, neutrinos, our own solar system, and other discoveries and theories of the universe – and touches on topics of time.

Page Coulter. Call it a Mountain. Top of the World Press, 2021. Resident of Center Sandwich.

Amber Rose Crowtree. Harboring the Imperfect. Dancing Girl Press, 2021. Resident of Grafton. Purchase info: $7.00 from Amber Rose Crowtree’s online shop.

Synopsis: Poems born from wilderness and metaphor.

Amber Rose Crowtree. The Inviolable Hours. Finishing Line Press, 2021. Resident of Grafton. Purchase info: $14.99 from Amber Rose Crowtree’s online shop.

Synopsis: A memoir in poems, from the beginnings of a poet to-today.

Mark Decarteret. lesser case. Nixes Mate Books, 2021. Resident of Rye. Purchase info: $18.00 from Water Street Books (free shipping/signed) or from Nixes Mate Pub/Bookstore.

Synopsis: “Mark DeCarteret’s imagination is a cosmos…. Here, he reveals its deeper axioms, and shows us how to comprehend its immensity through the measured, concentrated, stillness of wisdom.”  William Varner

Samantha DeFlitch. Confluence. Broadstone Books, March 2021. Resident of Portsmouth.

William Doreski. Mist in Their Eyes, Better than Starbucks Press, 2021. Resident of Peterborough. Purchase info: $15.00 from Better Than Starbucks’ Organization.

Synopsis: Mist in Their Eyes is a collection of poems featuring a sequence based on the life and work of Hart Crane. The other poems explore the ways in which our imaginations intersect and interact with our perceptions of the external world.

Alice B Fogel. Nothing But: a series of indirect considerations on art & consciousness. 2021. Spuyten Duyvil. Resident of Walpole. Purchase info: $16.00 from Spuyten Duyvil.

Synopsis: Nothing But reveals the disruptions—welcome or unsettling—to our stream of consciousness that occur when we encounter the unexplainable. In these poems, such suspensions of linear thought become a beckoning toward transcendence, an opening both deeper into, and out beyond, our perceptions in an otherwise prescribed world.

Elizabeth Gauffreau. Grief Songs: Poems of Love & Remembrance, published by Paul Stream Press, 2021. Resident of Nottingham. E-mail Elizabeth directly to purchase.

Midge Goldberg. To Be Opened After My Death. Kelsay Books. Resident of Chester. Purchase info: $19.00

Synopsis: To Be Opened After My Death, New Hampshire poet Midge Goldberg’s third collection of poetry, contains “her originality of wit, formal virtuosity, and knack for inhabiting and reinventing objects as commonplace as an ice tray, a hanging plant, or an empty shell, and making them extraordinary.”

William James. If I Forget Thee Lowcountry, Self-published, 2021. Resident of Manchester. Purchase info: William James Poetry.

Meg Kearney. All Morning the Crows. The Word Works, 2021. Resident of New Ipswich. Purchase info: $18.00 from Toad Books, or SPD Books.

Synopsis: In All Morning the Crows Meg Kearney draws on her acute powers of observation, a lively curiosity, and her gift for gorgeous imagery to take us on a journey of personal exploration, discovery, and reconciliation. Winner of the 2020 Washington Prize, All Morning the Crows spent seven months on Small Press Distribution’s poetry bestseller list upon its release in 2021.

Don Kimball. Late Autumn, Raking. Kelsay Books, 2021. Resident of Concord. Purchase info: $19.00 at Kelsay Books.

Synopsis: “Kimball is an entertaining storyteller with an ear attuned to the power of each word.” – Michael Cantor, Furusato. “Read these poems, unobtrusively crafted in either fresh, musical free verse or in deft formal patterns. Nothing in this book will fail to speak to you, quietly but in depth—and truthfully.”- Rhina P. Espaillat, The Field.

Katherine Morgan. Girl, Woman, Bird. Finishing Line Press, 2022 (available for pre-order). Resident of Durham. Purchase info: $14.99 at Finishing Line Press.

Synopsis:  Not only is a girlhood recollected in these poems, but there is also an adult finding her bearings and there are birds, from robins and woodpeckers, to a sharp-shinned hawk. These literal birds point toward a free, exploratory, and singing spirit that informs Morgan’s poetry throughout.

Alexandria Peary. Battle of Silicon Valley at Daybreak. Spuyten Duyvil, 2022 (available November 2021). Resident of Londonderry. Purchase info: $16.00 from Spuyten Duyvil.

Synopsis: New Hampshire Poet Laureate Alexandria Peary offers a high-spirited exploration of the vexations of life in 2020-2021, from social media giants to pandemic inequity to a concrete poem about a landfill. Battle of Silicon Valley at Daybreak is a book distinctly for the times: federal judges hide behind houseplants, a sonnet explodes from sexism, statues of penthouse dictators are toppled, a mountain threatens to drop on top of a hiker as an act of homophobia, emoji are at war in a mural outside a cafeteria, and 100,000 early Christian martyrs try to figure out the on-switch to a lost-and-found I-pad in a crypt—as the poems in this book take on social media.

Alexandria, Peary, editor. COVID SPRING II: More Granite State Pandemic Poems. Hobblebush Books, 2021. Resident of Londonderry. Purchase info: $18.00 from Hobblebush Books.  A portion of sales goes to NH Food Bank.

Synopsis: “Picking up where COVID Spring left off, this new collection beautifully captures the uncertainty, the burnout, and the hope—lots of hope—of a diverse group of poets from the granite State and beyond as they look toward a post-pandemic future.” –Mary Russell, Director, Center for the Book at the New Hampshire State Library

Kyle Potvin. Loosen. Hobblebush Books, 2021. Resident of Exeter. Purchase info: $18.00 from Hobblebush Books.

Synopsis: Loosen deals with illness, loss and mortality while recognizing the saving power of ordinary pleasures. In Lily Poetry Review, Jennifer Martelli wrote, “Loosen goes beyond the boundaries of cancer; this is a book about breath and precision and lifetimes.”

Gina Puorro. The Wild Will Call You Back, Self-Published, 2021. Resident of Barrington. Purchase info: $14.99 on Amazon.

Autumn Siders. She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not: 365 Poems to Lift You Up, Crush Your Soul, and Lift You Back Up Again. E.M. Sanchez Press, 2021. Resident of Moultonborough. Purchase info: $20.00 from Ingram.

Synopsis: Poetry reflects life, and life is full of ups and downs. Whether you are riding high or stuck in the pits of hell, this collection has the perfect poem to match your mood, bring you down, or save your soul.

Betsy Snider. View From the Other Side, Blue Light Press, November 2020. Resident of Acworth. Purchase info: $15.95 from Blue Light Press.

Synopsis:  A collection of poems grounded in the stony soil of rural NH and distant convents. “I am undone”, says the speaker in the first poem of Betsy Snider’s lush and intimate journey, and at once we are in the thrall of a remarkable energy. Her poems honor and celebrate life fully lived, and challenge the idea of an inevitable end. Finalist for book of poetry from the 2021 NH Literary Awards.

Maren Tirabassi and Maria Mankin, eds. Pitching our Tents: Poetry of Hospitality. Book Funnel, 2021. Resident of Portsmouth. Purchase info: at Book Funnel.

Synopsis: Thirty-four poets from Canada, Argentina, Brazil, India, Australia, Republic of Georgia, USA, and Aotearoa/New Zealand contributed poetry about inclusivity and welcome in their contexts to support the Peace Cathedral (Protestant) in Georgia as they build, at great danger, a synagogue, a mosque, and an Interfaith library and children’s program within their walls. Published as free in response for charitable contributions or the willingness to share the story of the Peace Cathedral which creates safety. Available through a Book Funnell link which allows people to receive a free electronic copy with a choice of formats including a PDF copy.

It is only in print from Amazon (created to give the contributors copies.)

Dianalee Velie. Italian Lesson, The Poetry Box, 2021. Resident of Newbury. Purchase info: $16.00 from The Poetry Box.

Synopsis: While Dianalee Velie was teaching poetry in Italy, she composed
these poems to reflect her love of the country and for her cousins
in Santa Croce di Camerina, Sicily. Italian Lesson celebrates the
sights and sounds of Italy—explorations of the local food & drink,
sightseeing expeditions, and the lively spirit of the Italian people
as they welcomed and shared their way of life. Come along on her
Italian journey and you too will fall in love.

Carol Westberg. Ice Lands. David Robert Books, 20201. Resident of Hanover. Purchase info: $19.00 from David Robert Books.

Synopsis: The lyric poems in Ice Lands journey through regions of knowing and not knowing, alive to our mortal connections in this precarious world and to the brevity of our stay. This book, says poet Lisa Russ Spaar, reads like “a gathering of koans, a breviary for navigating the second decade of the twenty-first century.”

Pat Whitney. Lost and Found. Self-Published, 2021. Resident of Sunapee. Purchase info: $15.00 at Amazon

Synopsis: Accessible poetry paired with abstract art, for all ages.