Hollins University Professor of English Cathryn Hankla‘s new volume of poetry may be titled Galaxies, but don’t mistake it for an exploration of astronomy.
Mercer University Press, the publisher, instead describes it as “a book of seeking and beseeching. Galaxies forms a collective of connected but disparate things. Each galaxy grouping constitutes a gravitational system of concern, finding its own music and approach to what a poem can be. Together the poems create a spiritual pilgrimage, a sequence sending up an alarm for the earth, inviting the reader to walk a path to the heart’s center.”
Galaxies has already received considerable praise. Author Alice Fulton called it a “quietly mind-blowing book,” while poet and novelist Carol Moldaw said the collection consisted of “poems of lyric capaciousness, thoughtful, intricate, and enticing.”
Hankla will be discussing and reading from Galaxies during her upcoming book tour:
Tuesday, August 8
Bookworks, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 6 p.m.
Wednesday, August 9
Collected Works, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 6 p.m.
Saturday, August 12
Tattered Cover, Denver, Colorado, 2 p.m.
Tuesday, August 15
Colorado Mountain College, Leadville, Colorado, noon
Sunday, September 3
Malaprops, Asheville, North Carolina, 3 p.m.
Friday – Sunday, October 13 – 15
Southern Festival of the Book, Nashville, Tennessee
Thursday, November 9
Eleanor D. Wilson Museum, Hollins University, Roanoke, Virginia, 7 p.m.
Born in the Appalachian mountains of Virginia, Hankla teaches in the Jackson Center for Creative Writing at Hollins and serves as the poetry editor of The Hollins Critic. She has published 12 previous books of fiction and poetry, including Fortune Teller Miracle Fish and Great Bear.
