by Chelsea Dingman (Author)
Thaw delves into the issues at the core of a resilient family: kinship, poverty, violence, death, abuse, and grief. The poems follow the speaker, as both mother and daughter, as she travels through harsh and beautiful landscapes in Canada, Sweden, and the United States. Moving through these places, she examines how her surroundings affect her inner landscape; the natural world becomes both a place of refuge and a threat. As these themes unfold, the histories and cold truths of her family and country intertwine and impinge on her, even as she tries to outrun them.
Unflinching and raw, Chelsea Dingman's poems meander between childhood and adulthood, the experiences of being a mother and a child paralleling one another. Her investigation becomes one of body, self, woman, mother, daughter, sister, and citizen, and of what those roles mean in the contexts of family and country.Author Biography
CHELSEA DINGMAN's first book, Thaw (Georgia), was chosen by Allison Joseph to win the National Poetry Series. Dingman is also the author of the chapbook What Bodies Have I Moved and has won the Southeast Review's Gearhart Poetry Prize, the Sycamore Review's Wabash Prize, the Water-stone Review's Jane Kenyon Poetry Prize, and the South Atlantic Modern Language Association's Creative Writing Award for Poetry. Visit her website: chelseadingman.com.