Deerbrook Editions is Pleased to Announce
The Last Island has received
The Jane Kenyon Award for Outstanding Book of Poetry
The Last Island
Poems by Mimi White
82 pages; 6 x 9 trade paper; price $14.00; ISBN 978-0-9712488-8-5
with cover photograph by Sharon Beals
IN PRAISE OF THE LAST ISLAND
In these deft poems Mimi White traces with great sensitivity a landscape of intimacy. It is a place that is hazardous and rewarding, brimming with feeling that has been tried and retried. One reads poetry to deepen one’s sense of what it is to be alive- these poems do that with admirable concision.
—Baron Wormser
Mimi White’s mesmerizing book, The Last Island, is a many-faceted love story and, like love, insists you look again in wonder at history, your own gardens, relationships, children, pets, your nearly unbearable losses, and your own mortality. Through the alchemy of these smart, strong poems, you come to realize just how lucky you are to be alive. In the book’s first poem, the narrator, while watching a house burn down, finds herself in a reverie concerning the gifts and grief that come from a passionate relationship. And it’s the burning house that stayed with me as I read this book. The body itself is a house, of sorts and living — a fire full of terror but also great beauty. Be prepared as you read for many unexpected transformations, for revelations that arise from the most common events: visiting an old poet in his garden, feeding your beloved dog although you know he will die soon, releasing a newly healed bird into the orchard. And best of all, after you finish reading, these poems stay with you, their richness, their music, their sturdy love returning just when you need them most.
—Mekeel McBride
Praise for Mimi White- The Philbrick Poetry Award 2000
“These are poems of a deceptive quiet and simplicity, just that they make, together, a landscape of painful, almost surreal insistence.”
—Robert Creeley
Mimi White has been teaching creative writing for twenty-five years and is Co-Director of PicturePoets of AIR, a non-profit organization that provides enriching arts and cultural experiences to teenage girls. She has been a finalist and a recipient of a NH State Fellowship in Poetry. Her chapbook "The Singed Horizon" was selected by Robert Creeley as the recipient of the 2000 Philbrick Poetry Award. Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, New Hampshire 2005-2007, she is currently working to reduce the effects of global warming as a member of Rye, New Hampshire’s Energy Committee.
Published by Deerbrook Editions - P.O. Box 542 - Cumberland, ME 04021
Phone & FAX 207-829-5038
Available from; the publisher single title orders are $16.50 postage paid; Amazon.com; listed with Books In Print; Baker & Taylor . . .
Now distributed by Small Press Distribution http://www.spdbooks.org
