$14.99
“A tightly-unified series of Biblical portraits, Channeling Matriarchs makes use of archetypes still relevant to present selfhood. A fine first book.”
–Michael Kriesel, Hearst Award Winner, Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Past President
“In the patriarchal society of the Bible, chances for a woman to be remembered at all depended largely on the fame of husband, father, brother. Through line, phrase, or sometimes single words, Lynn Aprill subtly reveals the feelings, thoughts, motives of 16 named or nameless women, giving them a life of their own. Thus, Lot’s wife looks back to mourn her sodomized daughters; Jael is recognized for her heroic killing of the Israelites’ enemy; Dinah hints that her brothers’ murder of Shechem, thereby “rescuing” her from his bed, is not at all appreciated. Channeling Matriarchs is a remarkable first-time publication by a very promising poet.”
–Irene Zimmerman, OSF, Catholic Press Association, 2020 First Place Winner in Poetry Book Category, Greenfield, WI
Channeling Matriarchs
by Lynn Aprill
$14.99, paper
978-1-64662-573-4
2021
Educator and poet Lynn Aprill’s poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets calendar, Bramble, Ambidextrous Bloodhound Press, and Pure Slush’s Birth and Growing Up from the Lifespan project. She resides with her husband and various dogs on 40 acres in Northeast Wisconsin.
Lynn Aprill –
A little background on the content of Channeling Matriarchs – Three books which have significantly changed my perspective on my faith are Genesis: A Living Conversation by Bill Moyers, The Harlot by the Side of the Road by Jonathan Kirsch, and The Red Tent by Anita Diamant. I began to wonder where the women fit into these Biblical narratives–there are too many times when they are silent. What was faith to these women? How did they come to be so casually sacrificed by their fathers, husbands, brothers? What can we learn from the matriarchs today? If the Bible had not been written from an entirely patriarchal point of view, what would these women have to say about their situations and their God? My hope is that these poems will stir the imagination with regard to these exceptional women whose stories shaped the future for our entire gender.
J.G. McClure, author of The Fire Lit & Nearing –
“To be clear I was not hungry, / not in the way you think,” declares Eve in the opening poem of Channeling Matriarchs. In clear and searing language, Lynn Aprill’s collection gives voice to the Biblical women whose sides of their stories have so long been silenced. This is an urgent, necessary collection: as Aprill’s Eve expains, “To walk / through my own world and not name it / was more than I could bear.”