Featured Poet: Michelle Boisseau

Continuing the American theme, I am glad to welcome, this Independence Day (in the US), poet Michelle Boisseau. Pictured. Boisseau's fourth book of poems, A Sunday in God-Years, was published in 2009 by University of Arkansas Press - which also published her third, Trembling Air.

Her recent work has appeared in The Southern Review, The Kenyon Review, Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, Shenandoah, and Ploughshares. Her textbook, Writing Poems, Pearson/Longman is in its 7th edition. She is professor of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. I hope to have her read for the Oxfam-Kingston series this autumn, in London.

I Love A Parade

She knows a spoonful of religion.

It's very shiny. Over the dunes,

along the ocean, she steadies it

at the end of her hand. Like ribbons

wandering behind her, her children

follow their own trembling spoons. Careless

grasses congregate in the sand. Smirk

of surf, cough of gull, I must confess

I'm not trying that hard to love her.

poem by Michelle Boisseau

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