Of a Mother by Sarah Williams-Devereux – NWVS #177
$17.99
The emotional and physical ties between mothers and daughters haunt Of a Mother, poet Sarah Williams-Devereux’s micro-chapbook about the loss of her mother to cancer and subsequent decade of mourning. With plain language and an unflinching eye, Williams-Devereux documents every stage of her mother’s decline and the surprising way that grief unspools over time. The title poem and others explore the legacy of the body’s betrayal over generations, turning a meditation on endometriosis into a bloody love letter. In our sanitized society, where death often happens off-stage and in silence, Williams-Devereux offers a bold opportunity to hold death by the hand, stare it in the face, and make our peace.
–Faith Adiele, author of The Nigerian-Nordic Girl’s Guide to Lady Problems
Sarah Williams-Devereux’s exquisite book, Of a Mother, is a hard-won and vastly original love song to her mother, landing on sonorous and luminous notes from a daughter’s birth past a mother’s death. As Williams-Devereux writes in one poem, “I summon you over & over,” whether on an answering machine, momentary thoughts, or daily yearnings to acknowledge and keep alive the flame of connection. The depth of intimacy, courage, and love between the two endures in and beyond these finely honed poems, vivid and tender, and altogether clear-eyed in speaking of the love that outlives life.
–Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Kansas Poet Laureate Emeritus
By turns sensual and cutting, these poems are filled to the brim with grief as you’ve never experienced it before. Each line explodes with life even as they chronicle death and its chaotic aftermath. The pain of losing a mother is indescribable, yet Williams-Devereux captures it with terrifying, tender precision.
–AJ Odasso, author of The Sting of It and The Pursued and the Pursuing
Description
Of a Mother – NWVS #177
by Sarah Williams-Devereux – NWVS #177
Paper
$17.99
979-8-88838-374-2
2023
Of a Mother enters the strange time-space continuum of grief that is terminal illness, exploring a mother’s death from cancer and a daughter’s ways of coping. In this linear set of poems, everyday objects like pincushions, dressing gowns, and perfumes become relics; sponge baths, cool drinks, and hand lotion become sacred offerings; the living mother and the cremation urn are superimposed, leaving the bereaved at a crossroads: how to live without a parent.
Sarah Williams-Devereux is a poet, artist, and educator from Pittsburgh, PA. Her work has appeared in multiple avenues, including journals, anthologies, radio, and public art projects. She teaches poetry for the Madwomen in the Attic program at Carlow University in Pittsburgh, PA. Certified in transformative language arts foundations from the Transformative Language Arts Network, she is an apprentice training instructor for Amherst Writers & Artists and received her MA in teaching writing from Johns Hopkins University. She also has an extensive background in social justice philanthropy, art education, and museum education.
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