It’s a Trilogy! NEW BOOK
“It takes time in the dark room to bring lived-experience into focus and to develop the meaning we’ve made of our lives.”
Poems from the Dark Room, Colleen Redman’s third book of poems in a series, has been published and can now be ordered ($13) from Amazon and is available locally at The Harvest Moon Food Store and the Floyd Country Store. As a poetry memoir and travelogue of aging, the poems delve into personal and universal themes where depth psychology and death mythology meet.
Losing two of her brothers in 2001 set the stage for Redman’s study of death and was the impetus behind her 2003 book The Jim and Dan Stories, which was included in a curriculum for a Radford University grief and loss class for counselors before it went out of print. Her poetry has most recently been published in Artemis Journal, Floyd County Moonshine, Poetica Review and on her blog looseleafnotes.com.
Born from the practice of giving the soul its right of way, Poems from the Dark Room is a retrieving and integration of memories from life’s stages, where science and mythology converge with imagination, where grief is imbued with honoring the past, as with “A Visitation” …I imagine my mother’s kitchen / still existing somewhere in time / after the big bang / and near a bright galaxy / that a giant telescope can see…
There is biographical and generational storytelling … When Lucy and Desi slept in twin beds / And children hid under desks during nuclear drills / You played with matches / and picked your favorite Beatle / while your heroes were assassinated / and your brother was drafted… Although several poems deal with grief and loss, others are buoyed with humor… When my husband gets bored and restless / he thinks about changing jobs / I just change the color of my nightgown / But is has to be silk…
Some of the poems explore the creative process of writing poetry… When our eyes become / adjusted to darkness / we call ourselves poets / We wait for poems / that fit like skin / We dream them / from a distance / then write them close in…
Redman’s first poetry collection, Packing a Suitcase for the Afterlife, was published in 2017 by Finishing Line Press and reviewed by poet, novelist Jim Minick, who wrote, “Loss tempered by wonder, love radiating like the moon (a bowl fired by the sun”), these poems track a life, playful yet dark, frank and funny, yet somber…”
Packing a Suitcase for the Afterlife was followed by the 2021 publication of Objects are Closer Than They Appear, described by the poet as “a distillation through the rear-view mirror of poetic memoir where every remnant pulled from a dream or a memory resonates with an afterlife, as if a visitation from the same place my dead loved ones are, closer than they seem.”
As with her first two poetry collections, the poems that appear in Poems from the Dark Room are the basis of Redman’s call-and-response poetry readings that she does locally with fellow poet and author of Poetic Memoir of a Nascent Senescent, Katherine Chantal. They represent a completion of a body of work, the telling of a life story where the grace of grief can come full circle and loss is grounded in an acceptance of death as an inevitable mystery that we each will pioneer… become the air / for others to breathe / A memory that floats / like a fragrance…
Note-A slightly edited version of the above was first published in The Floyd Press.
