Description

Three poems about parents, children, and their fraught relationships.

Background

Three of my poems are included in the Adult Children: Being One, Having One & What Goes In-Between anthology from Universal Table/Wising Up Press, published at the beginning of 2022. The book can ordered on the publisher’s website or at major book retailers. Four of us here in Tucson have pieces included. Congratulations to Paula Brown and Penelope Starr (I don’t know the other writer yet.) And thank you to Paula for sharing the submission opportunity!

My poems “Pangaea Proxima” and “Panthalassa” use geological time and tectonics to explore fraught relationships between parents and children. “Juniper Tree, Boy and Bird” explores the same, but with fairy tale and song.

From the publisher:

“What defines adulthood nowadays? Or ever? In particular when do we see our own children as adults? When they are older than we were at the age we had them? When they have children of their own? Are fully self-supporting? What about the prematurely adult children some of us were or tried to be—where have they gone? And the lost and needy children in us? Are they still active? When our parents are failing, what is an adult to adult relationship then? When we have been completely dependent on someone—or fully responsible for them—is full parity ever possible? Desirable?”

“In this Wising Up Anthology, fifty writers explore—with zest, angst, humor, humility, anger, and love—through stories, poems, memoirs and creative non-fiction, our constantly changing and, hopefully, maturing relationships with those we raised and those who raised us.”