I’ve been keeping this close. At last, I get to share. I’m ever-so-slightly beside myself to announce that my first book, Tell the Turning, is going to press this year, 2021.

And not just any press: Tell the Turning is a collaboration between myself, Bored Wolves, and Lucy Bellwood, and it’s going to be beautiful. It’s also an ongoing joy to co-create.

Picture a book that’s comfortable in the hand, and small and light enough to slip in your bag or backpack. The cover and pages are substantial, hard to tear, delicious to touch and smell. The spine is both sewn and glued—extremely durable, even if you crack it. About 100 pages of poetry are cleanly set, with gorgeous illustrations in pen and ink wash by Lucy. The print run is small—a few hundred.

And lest this all sound prohibitively expensive: it’s not. Part of the point is to make something utterly lovely and also accessible.

We’re crowdfunding this limited little edition, which means I hope you will pre-order a copy for yourself (and maybe one for a friend?) this spring. Mark your calendar, if that’s a thing you do, and expect a link from me to a Kickstarter campaign in May.

The finished books will print and ship as the year’s quieter, darker half returns (at least here in the Northern Hemisphere.) Tell the Turning will be with you in time to companion that circling-in toward the dark. Maybe you greet the dark and the cold with relief. Maybe winter is your nemesis. Tell the Turning is written to walk beside you, either way.*

In the meantime, I would enormously appreciate any sharing you would like to do, via word of mouth or email or letter or newsletter or phone or social media. I’ve never made a book before. I’m not a marketer, and I don’t much like the ethics of marketing anyway. I’d prefer to rely on folks who like my work telling their friends about a new book they might enjoy.

New folks who’d like to be notified when the Kickstarter goes live can sign up for this blogletter right here on my home page.**

Huge thanks to all of you who have read my work here and elsewhere, emailed me, written to me, even printed off pieces to read aloud. You are, as I hope I have already told you, wonderful, and I am grateful. I can’t wait for you to hold Tell the Turning.

---

*So what is it about?—you’re asking, possibly. I never know how to answer this question about poetry, but it’s a legitimate one. Here’s what I can say: Tell the Turning is full of fields and tides and beaches, talking owls and wondrous weeds, half-heard songs and half-light, lament and celebration, longing and belonging. My publisher called it “a hymnal crossed with an almanac.” I’m quite happy with that.

**I’m calling it a blogletter now, ’cause it’s a blog that functions like a newsletter.