Indwelling (Resource Publications, 2024) explores different ways of being inside—inside a work of art, inside the history of a place, inside a pandemic’s constraints—but not necessarily at home. Isolated experience seeks the intimacy of indwelling, and that intimacy gradually expands to accommodate a broader, more global perspective. These are poems of connection attempted in the face of mortality, loss, and absence: they personalize encounters with abandoned houses, nod at other writers who will never nod back, and look in old places for alternatives to modern ruts. They dignify the mundane, past and present, and find hope there, too.
Indwelling is available here.
Kairos (Finishing Line Press, 2019)Libby Maxey’s first poetry collection, speaks both to the passage of time and to the timelessness of being. The epistolary quality of the sonnet form is front and center, insisting on connection, even as the poems suggest that the mysteries of the past have nothing on the mysteries of our personal present and the people we love. Kairos makes family out of history, suggesting that a past gleaned from literature and place can help us structure, interpret, communicate, and even experience the present.
Kairos is available here.