The poems gathered for In the Willing Dirtreflect a recent six-year period, during which the poet, Jade Bradbury, faced serious health challenges and also explored through the writing of these poems the depth of her passion for life and the natural world. The poems are not in pursuit of answers to questions about why one thing or another besets us, but rather in search of what matters, what is true, no matter what. The poet knows she must make peace with various coordinates that inform and connect her understanding of the cosmos. She notes that weare Nature, that we're the earthquakes, the love and the fear, the violence and stillness; drought and plenty, the darkness and light, creation and destruction that fuels the carbon cycle from which all matter flows. More often than not, she balances the gravitas of those observations with subtle humor and a voice that both chides and forgives. She has said that her poems are prayers for the willingness of dirt to succor and sustain us.
Bradbury, Jade: - Sometimes it takes a good fright to shake us out of our customary zone. Faced with serious illness, the lifelong poet, Jade Bradbury, who'd worked as educator, print journalist, network television story editor, museum curator, writer, and community arts advocate returned to her roots. The poems gathered in this chapbook were written over a recent six-year period during which she consulted with the home elements of earth, wind, fire, and water, calling on them to guide her poetic rendering of what genuinely matters, no matter what. What emerges from what she calls the willing dirt is a living testimony on behalf of a life lived passionately in love with the natural world while attempting to make peace with a material world much in need of it. Bradbury's poems, essays, print articles and columns, book and film reviews have been published in many literary journals, daily and weekly newspapers, magazines and periodicals over several decades. She lives in California's South Bay Area. Visit her at www.jadebradbury.com
Goss, Erica: - Erica Goss served as Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, California from 2013-2016. Her latest poetry collection, Night Court, won the 2016 Lyrebird Prize from Glass Lyre Press. She is the author of Wild Place (2012, Finishing Line Press) and Vibrant Words: Ideas and Inspirations for Poets (2014, Pushpen Press). Erica's work is featured in numerous anthologies and journals, and has won prizes and frequent nominations. Erica was the host of Word to Word, a Show About Poetry, on KCAT Cable TV in Los Gatos, and wrote The Third Form, a column about video poetry, for Connotation Press. She is the co-founder of Media Poetry Studio, a poetry-and-film camp for teen girls. In 2018, Erica founded Girls' Voices Matter, an arts education program for teen girls. Erica lives in Eugene, Oregon, and teaches classes in poetry, memoir and video.
