Book Review of Sorrel Summer Sky by Shelli Rottschafer (Finishing Line Press)
Review written by Isabel Grey.
southbroadwaypress.org/2026/10/29/boo… #poetry #books #bookreview #bookrecommendations
Review written by Isabel Grey.
southbroadwaypress.org/2026/10/29/boo… #poetry #books #bookreview #bookrecommendations
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Guest Post: How Poetry Can Repair the World by
Lesléa Newman gilagreenwrites.com/news-and-event… #Poetry #poets #books
Lesléa Newman gilagreenwrites.com/news-and-event… #Poetry #poets #books
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FLP author Ellen Rosenbloom page on Yetzirah:
yetzirahpoets.org/discover-jewis… #poetry #books #poets
yetzirahpoets.org/discover-jewis… #poetry #books #poets
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FLP CHAPBOOK OF THE DAY: Breaking Through Broken by Saitharn Im-Iam
On SALE: finishinglinepress.com/product/breaki…
In this debut chapbook, Breaking Through Broken, is a collection of poems portraying a Thai immigrant’s imperfect and incomplete journey. Through vivid fragments, this collection delves into the unflinching and uncompromising reality of a once-broken poet’s autobiography, tracing her journey from childhood immigration to a tumultuous adolescence. Words, stories, and emotions are interwoven to offer a poignant exploration of the journey of an unyielding young immigrant who carries within her the essence of a fluctuating cultural connection, childhood dreams, brutal realities, and the yearnings of the universe. #poetry #ThaiAmerican #BIPOC #memory #childhood
Saitharn Im-Iam is a first-generation Thai American poet, writer, English instructor, and life-long dreamer. She received her MA from Emporia State University, and received her BA from Pittsburg State University where she graduated Summa Cum Laude. She loves all things nerdy–specifically anime, video games, comic books, and magic in every essence. She has been published in the Cow Creek Review, The Blue Route, Coelacanth, Runestone, Mockingheart Review, Flint Hills Review, and Midwest Quarterly. Breaking Through Broken is her debut chapbook.
PRAISE:
.
In Sai Im-Iam’s heartbreaking debut collection, we’re introduced to a speaker born as cataclysm. Fragmentation, rebirth, regeneration, and creation haunt these poems strong enough to converse with such great poetic voices as Lucille Clifton in her “Shapeshifter” poems, and as Gwendolyn Brooks, to whom she responds, “We / learn white.” Sai Im-Iam is a woman who deserves to be recognized, and I mean that quite literally—because as an immigrant child in America with “a ‘Valid for Work Only’” card, her community failed her in all the most important ways a child can be failed. “I was an immigrant daughter with a middle school education,” she writes in the collection’s third poem as the narrative body of this book builds a complex backstory for a poet whose lyrical voice (Thank goodness, she is now voiced!) will move the reader to tears. Evocative details of personal experience unspool in such skilled and beautiful poetic lines as “My mom was there with light earthen eyes, / a gentle smile, and a large pot of jok / to cure illness of the body or heart,” and:
A kid, with nowhere to go, standing in an open,
grassy plain of nowhere Kansas
with only one match.”
Sai Im-Iam, a woman who has had to go out with “lanterns looking for [her]self”; who has created toys of stars—rocking horse, flowers and pearls—“in the night sky where the stars did more than survive,” has written poems to transform a violent obscene world. In these poems she claims her place amongst American letters.”
–Laura Lee Washburn, author of Arteries, The Book of Stolen Images, This Good Warm Place, and Watching the Contortionists
.
With the care she uses to describe how one of her poem’s characters prepares traditional Thai rice, this whole collection is seasoned with precision along with a keen eye for important, representative, cultural detail. This whole collection wafts with that enticing aroma and ushers in a new strong voice—like a searchlight’s strong cone of light up through the clouds, a signal from a new, promising, illuminated strain in American poetry.
–Kevin Rabas, Poet Laureate of Kansas, 2017-2019
Please share/please repost #flp #booktok #poetry #chapbook
On SALE: finishinglinepress.com/product/breaki…
In this debut chapbook, Breaking Through Broken, is a collection of poems portraying a Thai immigrant’s imperfect and incomplete journey. Through vivid fragments, this collection delves into the unflinching and uncompromising reality of a once-broken poet’s autobiography, tracing her journey from childhood immigration to a tumultuous adolescence. Words, stories, and emotions are interwoven to offer a poignant exploration of the journey of an unyielding young immigrant who carries within her the essence of a fluctuating cultural connection, childhood dreams, brutal realities, and the yearnings of the universe. #poetry #ThaiAmerican #BIPOC #memory #childhood
Saitharn Im-Iam is a first-generation Thai American poet, writer, English instructor, and life-long dreamer. She received her MA from Emporia State University, and received her BA from Pittsburg State University where she graduated Summa Cum Laude. She loves all things nerdy–specifically anime, video games, comic books, and magic in every essence. She has been published in the Cow Creek Review, The Blue Route, Coelacanth, Runestone, Mockingheart Review, Flint Hills Review, and Midwest Quarterly. Breaking Through Broken is her debut chapbook.
PRAISE:
.
In Sai Im-Iam’s heartbreaking debut collection, we’re introduced to a speaker born as cataclysm. Fragmentation, rebirth, regeneration, and creation haunt these poems strong enough to converse with such great poetic voices as Lucille Clifton in her “Shapeshifter” poems, and as Gwendolyn Brooks, to whom she responds, “We / learn white.” Sai Im-Iam is a woman who deserves to be recognized, and I mean that quite literally—because as an immigrant child in America with “a ‘Valid for Work Only’” card, her community failed her in all the most important ways a child can be failed. “I was an immigrant daughter with a middle school education,” she writes in the collection’s third poem as the narrative body of this book builds a complex backstory for a poet whose lyrical voice (Thank goodness, she is now voiced!) will move the reader to tears. Evocative details of personal experience unspool in such skilled and beautiful poetic lines as “My mom was there with light earthen eyes, / a gentle smile, and a large pot of jok / to cure illness of the body or heart,” and:
A kid, with nowhere to go, standing in an open,
grassy plain of nowhere Kansas
with only one match.”
Sai Im-Iam, a woman who has had to go out with “lanterns looking for [her]self”; who has created toys of stars—rocking horse, flowers and pearls—“in the night sky where the stars did more than survive,” has written poems to transform a violent obscene world. In these poems she claims her place amongst American letters.”
–Laura Lee Washburn, author of Arteries, The Book of Stolen Images, This Good Warm Place, and Watching the Contortionists
.
With the care she uses to describe how one of her poem’s characters prepares traditional Thai rice, this whole collection is seasoned with precision along with a keen eye for important, representative, cultural detail. This whole collection wafts with that enticing aroma and ushers in a new strong voice—like a searchlight’s strong cone of light up through the clouds, a signal from a new, promising, illuminated strain in American poetry.
–Kevin Rabas, Poet Laureate of Kansas, 2017-2019
Please share/please repost #flp #booktok #poetry #chapbook
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TO ORDER: finishinglinepress.com/product/the-wi…
Part-elegy/part-love-letter,The Widow’s Calendar by Veronica Corpuz is a breathtaking collection of poems that explore the intricacies of illness and mourning, widowhood and single motherhood. Through heart-rending detail and plainspoken us into themost intimate and sacred spaces of her memory: a hospital closet turned into a makeshift familyoffice, the hospice bedside, the dimly lit room of her son’s bedroom before he goes to sleep. In these carefully crafted poems and elegies, she transforms these moments of loss and grief into radiant gems of truth-telling. In the tiniest of details, Corpuz creates a looming portrait of grief and the redemptive power of faith, hope and love as seen through the eyes of her young son and the eyes of the widow. #widow #Poetry #PoetryCommunity #GriefLiterature #widows
Veronica Corpuz is a poet and interdisciplinary artist who explores themes of identity, assimilation, loss, and grief. A workshop facilitator in the Madwomen in the Attic program at Carlow University, she co-curates with Sarah Williams Devereaux Mad Bookends, a digital bulletin of creative writing by women writers of color. In addition, she is one of 13 womenartists in the notwhite collective and the poet-in-residence of Anthropology of Motherhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she resides.
Part-elegy/part-love-letter,The Widow’s Calendar by Veronica Corpuz is a breathtaking collection of poems that explore the intricacies of illness and mourning, widowhood and single motherhood. Through heart-rending detail and plainspoken us into themost intimate and sacred spaces of her memory: a hospital closet turned into a makeshift familyoffice, the hospice bedside, the dimly lit room of her son’s bedroom before he goes to sleep. In these carefully crafted poems and elegies, she transforms these moments of loss and grief into radiant gems of truth-telling. In the tiniest of details, Corpuz creates a looming portrait of grief and the redemptive power of faith, hope and love as seen through the eyes of her young son and the eyes of the widow. #widow #Poetry #PoetryCommunity #GriefLiterature #widows
Veronica Corpuz is a poet and interdisciplinary artist who explores themes of identity, assimilation, loss, and grief. A workshop facilitator in the Madwomen in the Attic program at Carlow University, she co-curates with Sarah Williams Devereaux Mad Bookends, a digital bulletin of creative writing by women writers of color. In addition, she is one of 13 womenartists in the notwhite collective and the poet-in-residence of Anthropology of Motherhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she resides.
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A Poem by Veronica Corpuz
paddockreview.com/2026/11/09/a-p… #poetry #hope #life #dying #widow @veronica_corpuz
paddockreview.com/2026/11/09/a-p… #poetry #hope #life #dying #widow @veronica_corpuz
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FLP BOOK OF THE DAY: Remember Horses by Max Wheeler
On SALE: finishinglinepress.com/product/rememb…
Fast becoming a memory of himself, Scurvy Littles finds his once reliable themes collapsing around him. What happened to the good little boy he was supposed to be? The Fireman, the Cowboy, the Movie Star, Cult leader, Poet—where oh where did he go wrong? Or is it them? Did it have to be like this, or was/is there another way? And where has that dang Eyeball gotten off to? Off roaming around no doubt, getting up to no good, what does it see? Somewhere along the way Scurvy forgot to look, and fantasized himself into…what exactly? Was it when the world created its hero by accident, or when the world’s Hero lost himself in the forest of his various mismeanings? Is his world the world, or simply a collision of repetitions, of him and his? Is he at home amongst all these fading things that make him what he is? A stranger, a mere guest amongst all the various materials that make up his various selves? The ground is shifting under his feet, but there must be a way forward, through this forest of objects & (mis)information, details remembered, experienced & imagined, finally/only to: Himself. #poetry #life #personhood #himself
Max Wheeler was born in western Colorado in 1976. He studied at Sarah Lawrence College. He was a partner of the sorely missed bookstore, Equator Books, in Venice Beach. Max lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter. His work has appeared in Sublevel Magazine, The Huffington Post, Western Humanities Review, Louisiana Literature and Exacting Clam. Remember Horses is his debut poetry collection.
SHOP NOW:
On SALE: finishinglinepress.com/product/rememb…
Fast becoming a memory of himself, Scurvy Littles finds his once reliable themes collapsing around him. What happened to the good little boy he was supposed to be? The Fireman, the Cowboy, the Movie Star, Cult leader, Poet—where oh where did he go wrong? Or is it them? Did it have to be like this, or was/is there another way? And where has that dang Eyeball gotten off to? Off roaming around no doubt, getting up to no good, what does it see? Somewhere along the way Scurvy forgot to look, and fantasized himself into…what exactly? Was it when the world created its hero by accident, or when the world’s Hero lost himself in the forest of his various mismeanings? Is his world the world, or simply a collision of repetitions, of him and his? Is he at home amongst all these fading things that make him what he is? A stranger, a mere guest amongst all the various materials that make up his various selves? The ground is shifting under his feet, but there must be a way forward, through this forest of objects & (mis)information, details remembered, experienced & imagined, finally/only to: Himself. #poetry #life #personhood #himself
Max Wheeler was born in western Colorado in 1976. He studied at Sarah Lawrence College. He was a partner of the sorely missed bookstore, Equator Books, in Venice Beach. Max lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter. His work has appeared in Sublevel Magazine, The Huffington Post, Western Humanities Review, Louisiana Literature and Exacting Clam. Remember Horses is his debut poetry collection.
SHOP NOW:
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FLP BOOK OF THE DAY: The Sea Ranch Poems by Barry Vitcov
On SALE: finishinglinepress.com/product/the-se…
The Sea Ranch Poems traces a summer on the Northern California Sonoma coastline through a sequence of intimate, daily observations. Walking beside his poodle through fog, wind, meadows, bluffs, and shorelines, Barry Vitcovattends closely to birds, whales, foxes, flowers, and the changing sea, finding in their rhythms reflections on belonging, privilege, aging, mortality, and the search for purpose. Moving from wonder and humor to environmental concern, illness, grief, and farewell, the collection becomes both a vivid portrait of a beloved place and a meditation on how attention transforms fleeting experience into memory, gratitude, and enduring connection. #NatureAndReflection #BelongingAndPlace #AgingAndMemory #MortalityAndRenewal #HumanityAndTheNaturalWorld
Barry Vitcov lives in Ashland, Oregon with his wife and exceptionally brilliant standard poodle. His poetry and short stories have appeared in a variety of literary publications, including: Jefferson Journal,EAP: The Magazine, Literary Yard, The Scarlet Review, Fiction on the Web, Labyrinth, Mobius Blvd., Black Sheep, Dark Horses, and The Rapids. A short story chapbook Murakami’s Poodle was published by Henlopen Press (2026).He has had six books previously published by Finishing Line Press, a collection of poetry, Where I Live Some of the Time (2021); a collection of short stories, The Wilbur Stories & More (2022); a chapbook collection of poems Structures(2024); a novella The Boy with Six Fingers (2025); Boychik Poems (2026), and Unknown & Other Stories (2026).
PRAISE:
.
Barry Vitcov’s disarming chronicle of walks through a coastal community lulls you with its fog, animals, and salt air. But just outside this daily practice of observation, the pitiless power of nature is never far away: a dead and rotting humpback whale waits at the beach, and a gopher awakens the predator inside a poodle. These poems gather to become a meditation on nature’s cycles and rhythms, the precarious presence of humans within them—and, ultimately, the impermanence that governs it all.
–Amy Miller, author of Astronauts
Just as the prologue poem in The Sea Ranch Poems states, Barry Vitcov faces the world with bright face, “open heart and lofty spirit,” while making close observations during his daily walks along the coast with his dog over the late summer of 2025. But in all of that beauty he hasn’t ignored his awareness of the destruction of the environment, and that humans are both apart from and a part of the whole, that “individuality does not diminish connectivity,” and “It’s the day-to-day that matters most.”
–Vincent Wixon, author of Laying By
Barry Vitcov’s, The Sea Ranch Poems is an invitation to his reader to imbibe a beauteous purview of place and analytic philosophy. It is a windswept space where sand and sea-salt dance with the symbolism of a beached, humpback whale. Seeking life in stillness while communing with cormorants, redtail foxes and one standard poodle. Gorgeous writing.
–Mark Novak, Author of Sonnets For Agnodice
Barry Vitcov’s latest book, The Sea Ranch Poems, is a tidy poetry collection that reads like an extended meditation. Written during a final seven-week pilgrimage to this Northern California coastal retreat, Barry invites us to join him on his daily walks as he transforms from observer to inhabitant. Together, we nod and gaze to the sea as he shares:… “each curling wave arrives with a story/ if we are willing to listen.” And as we close the cover on this alluring collection, it’s comforting to understand:… “we all belong/ on whatever migration/ we may follow/ regardless of how temporary.”
–Seth Kaplan, author of Habitat: Unearthing Home
On SALE: finishinglinepress.com/product/the-se…
The Sea Ranch Poems traces a summer on the Northern California Sonoma coastline through a sequence of intimate, daily observations. Walking beside his poodle through fog, wind, meadows, bluffs, and shorelines, Barry Vitcovattends closely to birds, whales, foxes, flowers, and the changing sea, finding in their rhythms reflections on belonging, privilege, aging, mortality, and the search for purpose. Moving from wonder and humor to environmental concern, illness, grief, and farewell, the collection becomes both a vivid portrait of a beloved place and a meditation on how attention transforms fleeting experience into memory, gratitude, and enduring connection. #NatureAndReflection #BelongingAndPlace #AgingAndMemory #MortalityAndRenewal #HumanityAndTheNaturalWorld
Barry Vitcov lives in Ashland, Oregon with his wife and exceptionally brilliant standard poodle. His poetry and short stories have appeared in a variety of literary publications, including: Jefferson Journal,EAP: The Magazine, Literary Yard, The Scarlet Review, Fiction on the Web, Labyrinth, Mobius Blvd., Black Sheep, Dark Horses, and The Rapids. A short story chapbook Murakami’s Poodle was published by Henlopen Press (2026).He has had six books previously published by Finishing Line Press, a collection of poetry, Where I Live Some of the Time (2021); a collection of short stories, The Wilbur Stories & More (2022); a chapbook collection of poems Structures(2024); a novella The Boy with Six Fingers (2025); Boychik Poems (2026), and Unknown & Other Stories (2026).
PRAISE:
.
Barry Vitcov’s disarming chronicle of walks through a coastal community lulls you with its fog, animals, and salt air. But just outside this daily practice of observation, the pitiless power of nature is never far away: a dead and rotting humpback whale waits at the beach, and a gopher awakens the predator inside a poodle. These poems gather to become a meditation on nature’s cycles and rhythms, the precarious presence of humans within them—and, ultimately, the impermanence that governs it all.
–Amy Miller, author of Astronauts
Just as the prologue poem in The Sea Ranch Poems states, Barry Vitcov faces the world with bright face, “open heart and lofty spirit,” while making close observations during his daily walks along the coast with his dog over the late summer of 2025. But in all of that beauty he hasn’t ignored his awareness of the destruction of the environment, and that humans are both apart from and a part of the whole, that “individuality does not diminish connectivity,” and “It’s the day-to-day that matters most.”
–Vincent Wixon, author of Laying By
Barry Vitcov’s, The Sea Ranch Poems is an invitation to his reader to imbibe a beauteous purview of place and analytic philosophy. It is a windswept space where sand and sea-salt dance with the symbolism of a beached, humpback whale. Seeking life in stillness while communing with cormorants, redtail foxes and one standard poodle. Gorgeous writing.
–Mark Novak, Author of Sonnets For Agnodice
Barry Vitcov’s latest book, The Sea Ranch Poems, is a tidy poetry collection that reads like an extended meditation. Written during a final seven-week pilgrimage to this Northern California coastal retreat, Barry invites us to join him on his daily walks as he transforms from observer to inhabitant. Together, we nod and gaze to the sea as he shares:… “each curling wave arrives with a story/ if we are willing to listen.” And as we close the cover on this alluring collection, it’s comforting to understand:… “we all belong/ on whatever migration/ we may follow/ regardless of how temporary.”
–Seth Kaplan, author of Habitat: Unearthing Home
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FLP CHAPBOOK OF THE DAY: Some Promise by Anna Weaver
On SALE: finishinglinepress.com/product/some-p…
Some Promise shares the love story of a woman told in fond recollections ofthe men she’s known, the versions of herself who loved them, and the electric moments that defined their connection. What her relationships lack in longevity, she makes up for in attention to small intimacies that leave a mark. These poems honor the brief, the imperfect, and the unforgettable. They speak of loving widely and remembering generously, treating the end of relationship not as a wound but as a landscape one might walk with curiosity and affection. #lovepoems #relationshippoetry #breakuppoetry #indieauthor #venusretrograde
Anna Weaver writes as a former soldier, a lover of flatlands, and a woman “with loyalties scattered over the landscape.” Her poems have appeared in Connotation Press, O-Dark-Thirty, One, Triggerfish Critical Review, and elsewhere. She’s performed her poetry in 39 states and counting and hosts a vibrant open mic in downtown Raleigh called Tongue & Groove.
.
PRAISE:
.
If you’ve ever loved and lost—or needed someone more than you thought you could stand—this is the book for you. In Some Promise, Anna Weaver teaches us, with deft compassion and gracious wit, that everyone we’ve ever loved has helped shape us, and that no one with the capacity for love is ever lost for long.
–Mimi Herman, author of The Kudzu Queen
.
Regardless of gender, we have all been the men in these gorgeously crafted pieces, just like we’ve all been the author as well. In Some Promise, Weaver delicately details the stories of her life while holding a nonjudgmental mirror up in front of herself, giving the reader permission to look, too. Some promises are forged of titanium and stubbornness intended to outlast time itself. Some are made of frailty and the best intentions, possessing a nature as temporary as a rainbow. This collection will nestle itself into permanence and an immortality fitting of only the purest of promises.
–Jorge Mendez, Artist in Residence, The Venue on 35th, and author of Poems I Stole From My Imaginary Friends and Keys & Crowbars
.
Some Promise unveils the aftermath of storm, the coded dreams of accountability, and the indescribable taste of knowing just how much enough weighs inside of the heart’s memory. Blessed assurances dance in the rhythms of the vernacular that create controlled yet wild, bold, and muscular poetic narratives.
–Jaki Shelton Green, North Carolina Poet Laureate
Please share/please repost #flp #booktok #poetry #chapbook
On SALE: finishinglinepress.com/product/some-p…
Some Promise shares the love story of a woman told in fond recollections ofthe men she’s known, the versions of herself who loved them, and the electric moments that defined their connection. What her relationships lack in longevity, she makes up for in attention to small intimacies that leave a mark. These poems honor the brief, the imperfect, and the unforgettable. They speak of loving widely and remembering generously, treating the end of relationship not as a wound but as a landscape one might walk with curiosity and affection. #lovepoems #relationshippoetry #breakuppoetry #indieauthor #venusretrograde
Anna Weaver writes as a former soldier, a lover of flatlands, and a woman “with loyalties scattered over the landscape.” Her poems have appeared in Connotation Press, O-Dark-Thirty, One, Triggerfish Critical Review, and elsewhere. She’s performed her poetry in 39 states and counting and hosts a vibrant open mic in downtown Raleigh called Tongue & Groove.
.
PRAISE:
.
If you’ve ever loved and lost—or needed someone more than you thought you could stand—this is the book for you. In Some Promise, Anna Weaver teaches us, with deft compassion and gracious wit, that everyone we’ve ever loved has helped shape us, and that no one with the capacity for love is ever lost for long.
–Mimi Herman, author of The Kudzu Queen
.
Regardless of gender, we have all been the men in these gorgeously crafted pieces, just like we’ve all been the author as well. In Some Promise, Weaver delicately details the stories of her life while holding a nonjudgmental mirror up in front of herself, giving the reader permission to look, too. Some promises are forged of titanium and stubbornness intended to outlast time itself. Some are made of frailty and the best intentions, possessing a nature as temporary as a rainbow. This collection will nestle itself into permanence and an immortality fitting of only the purest of promises.
–Jorge Mendez, Artist in Residence, The Venue on 35th, and author of Poems I Stole From My Imaginary Friends and Keys & Crowbars
.
Some Promise unveils the aftermath of storm, the coded dreams of accountability, and the indescribable taste of knowing just how much enough weighs inside of the heart’s memory. Blessed assurances dance in the rhythms of the vernacular that create controlled yet wild, bold, and muscular poetic narratives.
–Jaki Shelton Green, North Carolina Poet Laureate
Please share/please repost #flp #booktok #poetry #chapbook
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TO ORDER: finishinglinepress.com/product/making…
Pam Gemme shares life facing an unplanned pregnancy when she was 16. The poems tell of a defiant youth who despite the odds made a life for herself and her daughter. Her attitude though, was not what is stereotypically seen in adolescent eper than that. Systemic barriers– poverty, racism and especially misogyny are built into systems so that teen girls who choose to become mothers have in their lives stacked against them. Pam had to walk away from church, school, and other places that should be there to support youth making difficult life choices. Sometimes jarring, sometimes seeking accountability in Making My Madonna Pam tells us how she found her own answers via her poems. #teenpregnancy #poverty #racism #poetry #misogyny
@pamelagemme @pamelamgemme
Pamela Gemme is a poet and visual artist. Recent or forthcoming publications: The American Journal of Poetry, Haiku Journal, The Chicago Quarterly Review, Naugatuck River Review, J Journal, SoFloPoJo, Ibbetson Street Press, Mizmor Anthology and others. Pamela works privately with poets to write their trauma, and she runs workshops locally. Pamela co-leads a reading series in Needham, Mass. with the poet Mani Iyer. Most recently her manuscript Making My Madonna received Honorable Mention in the 2025 Slate Roof Press contest. Pamela co-edited Essential Voices: A Covid-19 Anthology from WVU Press released May 22, 2023. Pamela is on the editorial board at the Worcester Review. Pamela is an Ambassador of the National Baseball Poetry’s Festival.
Pam Gemme shares life facing an unplanned pregnancy when she was 16. The poems tell of a defiant youth who despite the odds made a life for herself and her daughter. Her attitude though, was not what is stereotypically seen in adolescent eper than that. Systemic barriers– poverty, racism and especially misogyny are built into systems so that teen girls who choose to become mothers have in their lives stacked against them. Pam had to walk away from church, school, and other places that should be there to support youth making difficult life choices. Sometimes jarring, sometimes seeking accountability in Making My Madonna Pam tells us how she found her own answers via her poems. #teenpregnancy #poverty #racism #poetry #misogyny
@pamelagemme @pamelamgemme
Pamela Gemme is a poet and visual artist. Recent or forthcoming publications: The American Journal of Poetry, Haiku Journal, The Chicago Quarterly Review, Naugatuck River Review, J Journal, SoFloPoJo, Ibbetson Street Press, Mizmor Anthology and others. Pamela works privately with poets to write their trauma, and she runs workshops locally. Pamela co-leads a reading series in Needham, Mass. with the poet Mani Iyer. Most recently her manuscript Making My Madonna received Honorable Mention in the 2025 Slate Roof Press contest. Pamela co-edited Essential Voices: A Covid-19 Anthology from WVU Press released May 22, 2023. Pamela is on the editorial board at the Worcester Review. Pamela is an Ambassador of the National Baseball Poetry’s Festival.
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Finishing Line Press retweeted
A version of my article "Poets Need to Listen" appears in the latest Of Poets and Poetry from the Florida State Poets Association (@FSPA_Poets). #poetry #poets #sound @FLPress emilykmichael.com/2026/07/25/poe…
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Finishing Line Press retweeted
My new book At Every Stage I've Been: Poems from @FLPress is now available on @amazon! amazon.com/At-Every-Stage… #poetry #blindpoet #womanpoet @FSPA_Poets @FloridaWriters1
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Finishing Line Press retweeted
lexcolibrary.libcal.com/event/17016692
Honored to be part of this elite group 1 Thanks,
@LexCoLibrary Irmo Branch! All titles available!
@thealienbuddha @FLPress @HistriaBooks #southernliterature #lpoetry $fictin
Honored to be part of this elite group 1 Thanks,
@LexCoLibrary Irmo Branch! All titles available!
@thealienbuddha @FLPress @HistriaBooks #southernliterature #lpoetry $fictin
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New from Finishing Line Press: Held Anyway: Poems on Medicine, Motherhood, and Becoming by Veronica Tucker
On SALE: finishinglinepress.com/product/held-a…
Held Anyway is a lyrical collection exploring the fragile space between emergency medicine and motherhood. Written by an emergency medicine and addiction medicine physician raising three children, these poems move between trauma bays, quiet kitchens, sleepless nights, and long runs on New England roads. The collection examines the emotional weight physicians carry, the resilience of family life, and the small ordinary moments that hold us together even when the world feels heavy. In these poems, survival, tenderness, and endurance coexist, reminding us that even imperfect lives can still be held with grace. #poetry #chapbook #motherhood #medicine #parenthood #healing
Veronica Tucker is an emergency medicine and addiction medicine physician, mother of three, and New England writer. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared in ONE ART: a journal of poetry, The Berlin Literary Review, Rust & Moth, and other journals. She lives in New Hampshire with her family. @veronicatuckerwrites
Please share/please repost #FLP #preorder #poetry #booktok #poetrytiktok
On SALE: finishinglinepress.com/product/held-a…
Held Anyway is a lyrical collection exploring the fragile space between emergency medicine and motherhood. Written by an emergency medicine and addiction medicine physician raising three children, these poems move between trauma bays, quiet kitchens, sleepless nights, and long runs on New England roads. The collection examines the emotional weight physicians carry, the resilience of family life, and the small ordinary moments that hold us together even when the world feels heavy. In these poems, survival, tenderness, and endurance coexist, reminding us that even imperfect lives can still be held with grace. #poetry #chapbook #motherhood #medicine #parenthood #healing
Veronica Tucker is an emergency medicine and addiction medicine physician, mother of three, and New England writer. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared in ONE ART: a journal of poetry, The Berlin Literary Review, Rust & Moth, and other journals. She lives in New Hampshire with her family. @veronicatuckerwrites
Please share/please repost #FLP #preorder #poetry #booktok #poetrytiktok
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TO ORDER: finishinglinepress.com/product/the-se…
The Semantics of Grief is a collection of poems that follow the grief of my husband’s illness and the grief of his death. The poems were written over a period of time, so both before and after he died. These poems are about how we take care of her the illness of someone we love, how we cope with the losses that accumulate over that period of time, from diagnosis to death, so to speak. The poems are also, inevitably, about love, how it looks and feels when you’re losing the person that you love. How we cope with stress and fear during this time. How sickness and death and grief affect the family that moves through it, and how those feelings evolve over time. #death, #loss, #fear, #acceptance, #grief
Mary Sexson is an award-winning poet with two full-length books and 2 collaborative chapbooks. Her most recent full-length book is Her Addiction An Empty Place at the Table, (Finishing Line Press June 2023). Chatter House Press released both of her collaborative chapbooks, Company of Women (2013) and Marriage Maps and Driven Destinies (2023). Her work has appeared in Alien Buddha, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Indianapolis Review, Of Rust and Glass, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, and Anti-Heroin Chic, among many others. Six of her poems are archived in the INverse collection of Hoosier Poets, at the Indiana State Library. Sexson has a Best of the Net and seven Pushcart Prize nominations.
@sexsonmary
The Semantics of Grief is a collection of poems that follow the grief of my husband’s illness and the grief of his death. The poems were written over a period of time, so both before and after he died. These poems are about how we take care of her the illness of someone we love, how we cope with the losses that accumulate over that period of time, from diagnosis to death, so to speak. The poems are also, inevitably, about love, how it looks and feels when you’re losing the person that you love. How we cope with stress and fear during this time. How sickness and death and grief affect the family that moves through it, and how those feelings evolve over time. #death, #loss, #fear, #acceptance, #grief
Mary Sexson is an award-winning poet with two full-length books and 2 collaborative chapbooks. Her most recent full-length book is Her Addiction An Empty Place at the Table, (Finishing Line Press June 2023). Chatter House Press released both of her collaborative chapbooks, Company of Women (2013) and Marriage Maps and Driven Destinies (2023). Her work has appeared in Alien Buddha, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Indianapolis Review, Of Rust and Glass, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, and Anti-Heroin Chic, among many others. Six of her poems are archived in the INverse collection of Hoosier Poets, at the Indiana State Library. Sexson has a Best of the Net and seven Pushcart Prize nominations.
@sexsonmary
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Why I Pray in Armenian, a finalist for Harbor Review’s Washburn Chapbook Prize (2025), is a lyric poetry collection rooted in lineage, language, and survival, where prayer emerges not only in churches but in kitchens, songs, and everyday he author’s experience as a first-generation Armenian American, these poems arise from repressed emotion and carefully archived memories of exile, inheritance, grief, and endurance, which the collection seeks to recover and preserve. Moving between Armenian and English, the book explores how faith, song, and storytelling become vessels for ancestral memory, transforming birds, bread, and breath into sacred acts. At its core, the collection is driven by the author’s longing to hold fast to Armenian roots while instilling in her children a love for a homeland only partially remembered, ensuring that what was once whispered in survival is carried forward as prayer. #love #country #armenia #prayer #family poetry
Meri Tumanyan is a first-generation Armenian American writer based in Los Angeles, California. She holds a B.A. in English and Comparative Literary Studies from Occidental College and an M.A. in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing from California State University, Northridge. She is a full-time high school English teacher and an adjunct professor of English. Her chapbook Why I Pray in Armenian was a finalist for Harbor Review’s Washburn Chapbook Prize (2025). Tumanyan is the author of several poetry collections, including Love in the Time of Corona, Shadows, The Promise of the Pomegranate Tree, Black Roses, and Whispers. Her children’s books, Mommy, the Dreamweaver, Daddy’s Waltz, Never Be Anyone Other Than You, and The Girl with the Purple Umbrella, are inspired by and dedicated to her children. Poetry, however, remains her deepest passion. @mt_musings Website: meritumanyanbooks.com
Why I Pray in Armenian, a finalist for Harbor Review’s Washburn Chapbook Prize (2025), is a lyric poetry collection rooted in lineage, language, and survival, where prayer emerges not only in churches but in kitchens, songs, and everyday he author’s experience as a first-generation Armenian American, these poems arise from repressed emotion and carefully archived memories of exile, inheritance, grief, and endurance, which the collection seeks to recover and preserve. Moving between Armenian and English, the book explores how faith, song, and storytelling become vessels for ancestral memory, transforming birds, bread, and breath into sacred acts. At its core, the collection is driven by the author’s longing to hold fast to Armenian roots while instilling in her children a love for a homeland only partially remembered, ensuring that what was once whispered in survival is carried forward as prayer. #love #country #armenia #prayer #family poetry
Meri Tumanyan is a first-generation Armenian American writer based in Los Angeles, California. She holds a B.A. in English and Comparative Literary Studies from Occidental College and an M.A. in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing from California State University, Northridge. She is a full-time high school English teacher and an adjunct professor of English. Her chapbook Why I Pray in Armenian was a finalist for Harbor Review’s Washburn Chapbook Prize (2025). Tumanyan is the author of several poetry collections, including Love in the Time of Corona, Shadows, The Promise of the Pomegranate Tree, Black Roses, and Whispers. Her children’s books, Mommy, the Dreamweaver, Daddy’s Waltz, Never Be Anyone Other Than You, and The Girl with the Purple Umbrella, are inspired by and dedicated to her children. Poetry, however, remains her deepest passion. @mt_musings Website: meritumanyanbooks.com
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FLP CHAPBOOK OF THE DAY: Beyond the Road’s Edge by Susan Cummins Miller
On SALE: finishinglinepress.com/product/beyond…
The poems in Beyond the Road’s Edge are a geopoetic journey into the mystery, magic, and lessons drawn from the natural world of the American West, the terrain of the author’s personal and professional odyssey. From crossing over the San Andreas Fault Zone to collecting Miocene mammals in the Mojave Desert and exploring the Great Unconformity in the Grand Canyon, the sensory images transport the reader beyond the observable and grounded to reveal a fresh landscape where Science, Art and wonder coalesce and suggest the question: Given Time, what’s next? #poetry #nature #geology #Time #AmericanWest
Tucson writer Susan Cummins Miller, a former field geologist and college instructor, is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Making Silent Stones Sing and Deciphering the Desert, and seven novels: My Bonney Lies Under, Death Assemblage, Detachment Fault, Quarry, Hoodoo, Fracture, and Chasm. She also compiled and edited the anthology A Sweet, Separate Intimacy: Women Writers of the American Frontier, 1800-1922. Her poems, short fiction and essays appear in numerous journals and anthologies.
PRAISE:
The test of fine poetry: you read it, you enter the silence…the fragility and strength of minute cells where Life is hidden, you go back to read it again. Susan Cummins Miller brings poetry to stone. She persuades that each layer of earth beneath our boots is an unknown world awaiting attention. With her as my eyes, I have never before so wanted to walk the earth. Miller writes with Buddhist understanding that the whole is a 3D, all-encompassing Mobius strip where inside and outside, body/spirit, beginning/ending…living and dying are one and the same indistinguishable, indestructible, infinite energy. She claims she does not speak the language of nature, but I promise you, she does.–Katie Sarah Zale, author of The Weight of a Leaf: Poems; coeditor of Winter in America (Again).Susan Cummins Miller’s poems are about movement and change within the processes of nature as they reflect human experience. As a geologist and paleontologist, what Miller brings us is a breathtaking discovery of this wisdom.The poet receives revelations throughout, such as in “Time Out of Mind,” in which she reflects on “memories of earlier transverses” as she is “grateful for these brief / soul-stealing minutes of peace.” In this volume, Miller gives us the gift of awareness of the moment we’re in, despite “the emptiness—the haunting, / lingering sense you’ve lost the meaning” despite “the silence and desolation / of spinning galaxies, the fragility and strength / of minute cells where Life / is hidden.” And finally, “Sit with them. Listen / to the mysteries.”–Nancy Owen Nelson, author of Letters to Jimbo: Poems (Kelsay Books, 2026)
Please share/please repost #flp #booktok #poetry #chapbook
On SALE: finishinglinepress.com/product/beyond…
The poems in Beyond the Road’s Edge are a geopoetic journey into the mystery, magic, and lessons drawn from the natural world of the American West, the terrain of the author’s personal and professional odyssey. From crossing over the San Andreas Fault Zone to collecting Miocene mammals in the Mojave Desert and exploring the Great Unconformity in the Grand Canyon, the sensory images transport the reader beyond the observable and grounded to reveal a fresh landscape where Science, Art and wonder coalesce and suggest the question: Given Time, what’s next? #poetry #nature #geology #Time #AmericanWest
Tucson writer Susan Cummins Miller, a former field geologist and college instructor, is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Making Silent Stones Sing and Deciphering the Desert, and seven novels: My Bonney Lies Under, Death Assemblage, Detachment Fault, Quarry, Hoodoo, Fracture, and Chasm. She also compiled and edited the anthology A Sweet, Separate Intimacy: Women Writers of the American Frontier, 1800-1922. Her poems, short fiction and essays appear in numerous journals and anthologies.
PRAISE:
The test of fine poetry: you read it, you enter the silence…the fragility and strength of minute cells where Life is hidden, you go back to read it again. Susan Cummins Miller brings poetry to stone. She persuades that each layer of earth beneath our boots is an unknown world awaiting attention. With her as my eyes, I have never before so wanted to walk the earth. Miller writes with Buddhist understanding that the whole is a 3D, all-encompassing Mobius strip where inside and outside, body/spirit, beginning/ending…living and dying are one and the same indistinguishable, indestructible, infinite energy. She claims she does not speak the language of nature, but I promise you, she does.–Katie Sarah Zale, author of The Weight of a Leaf: Poems; coeditor of Winter in America (Again).Susan Cummins Miller’s poems are about movement and change within the processes of nature as they reflect human experience. As a geologist and paleontologist, what Miller brings us is a breathtaking discovery of this wisdom.The poet receives revelations throughout, such as in “Time Out of Mind,” in which she reflects on “memories of earlier transverses” as she is “grateful for these brief / soul-stealing minutes of peace.” In this volume, Miller gives us the gift of awareness of the moment we’re in, despite “the emptiness—the haunting, / lingering sense you’ve lost the meaning” despite “the silence and desolation / of spinning galaxies, the fragility and strength / of minute cells where Life / is hidden.” And finally, “Sit with them. Listen / to the mysteries.”–Nancy Owen Nelson, author of Letters to Jimbo: Poems (Kelsay Books, 2026)
Please share/please repost #flp #booktok #poetry #chapbook
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The Silhouette of the Day Before is a meditation on memory, grief, love, resilience, and the ways the past continues to shape the present. Moving through intimate encounters with loss, family, friendship, illness, first love, technology, and the s ask what remains when people, places, and imagined futures disappear—and how we learn to carry those absences without allowing them to define us entirely. From unfinished meals and handwritten letters to butterflies, gardens, and digital messages, ordinary objects and moments become vessels for remembrance and connection. Jennifer Freya Helgeson’s debut poetry collection ultimately turns toward renewal, finding hope not in forgetting what came before, but in recognizing that love changes form, memory becomes part of who we are, and the present—fragile, fleeting, and imperfect—can still be enough. #poetry #memory #love #resilience #time
Jennifer Freya Helgeson is a writer and poet whose work explores memory, loss, love, nature, and human resilience, often tracing the ways the past continues to shape the present. With a PhD in Environmental and Developmental Economics and a background that includes peer-reviewed publications, co-edited textbooks, and writing for media outlets, Helgeson brings an interdisciplinary sensibility to her creative work, connecting personal experience with broader questions about humanity, technology, society, and the environment. She began writing poetry for publication in autumn 2025, and her work has since appeared in several online and print anthologies. Jennifer is also a passionate poetry educator and has served as a poet-in-residence. Jennifer’s debut poetry collection The Silhouette of the Day Before reflects on time, remembrance, connection, and the enduring forms love takes after loss. When she’s not writing, Jennifer enjoys gardening, dancing, and spending meaningful time with her loved ones. To learn more about her work, visit: jenniferfreyahelgeson.com and follow Jennifer on Instagram @jfhelgeson
The Silhouette of the Day Before is a meditation on memory, grief, love, resilience, and the ways the past continues to shape the present. Moving through intimate encounters with loss, family, friendship, illness, first love, technology, and the s ask what remains when people, places, and imagined futures disappear—and how we learn to carry those absences without allowing them to define us entirely. From unfinished meals and handwritten letters to butterflies, gardens, and digital messages, ordinary objects and moments become vessels for remembrance and connection. Jennifer Freya Helgeson’s debut poetry collection ultimately turns toward renewal, finding hope not in forgetting what came before, but in recognizing that love changes form, memory becomes part of who we are, and the present—fragile, fleeting, and imperfect—can still be enough. #poetry #memory #love #resilience #time
Jennifer Freya Helgeson is a writer and poet whose work explores memory, loss, love, nature, and human resilience, often tracing the ways the past continues to shape the present. With a PhD in Environmental and Developmental Economics and a background that includes peer-reviewed publications, co-edited textbooks, and writing for media outlets, Helgeson brings an interdisciplinary sensibility to her creative work, connecting personal experience with broader questions about humanity, technology, society, and the environment. She began writing poetry for publication in autumn 2025, and her work has since appeared in several online and print anthologies. Jennifer is also a passionate poetry educator and has served as a poet-in-residence. Jennifer’s debut poetry collection The Silhouette of the Day Before reflects on time, remembrance, connection, and the enduring forms love takes after loss. When she’s not writing, Jennifer enjoys gardening, dancing, and spending meaningful time with her loved ones. To learn more about her work, visit: jenniferfreyahelgeson.com and follow Jennifer on Instagram @jfhelgeson
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A Poem by Jennifer Freya Helgeson
paddockreview.com/2026/11/04/a-p… #poetry #life #present #nature @jfhelgeson
paddockreview.com/2026/11/04/a-p… #poetry #life #present #nature @jfhelgeson
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