Water Signs

By Liz Kellebrew

Written while riding the ferry across Puget Sound, Liz Kellebrew's poems explore the liminal places between cities and forests, animals and people, the sky and the sea. This gorgeous and impactful debut gazes unflinchingly at the twin crises of climate change and human hubris, urging us to look closer at the creatures who co-exist with us in the space between wild and tame. 

 

Whether it's a salmon riding in the trough between waves, a cormorant flexing on a harbor buoy, a tourist on the ferry, or a toad on the ridge of a nebula somewhere in the Milky Way, we are prompted to ask, What is the wavelength of a soul? What new ways of being will emerge as our world changes? Will we embrace the bodies of the unknowable future?

 

With equal parts wonder and humor, Kellebrew calls our attention to the strangeness and beauty of nature and our place in it, inviting us to fall in love with this open book called living.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Unsolicited Press
• Release date: Sep 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201250775

Book preview

Water Signs

by

Liz Kellebrew

Water Signs

Copyright © 2022 Liz Kellebrew

All Rights Reserved.

Published by Unsolicited Press.

First Edition.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Variations of Island Compass, Salmon Song, and Puget Shores were previously published as parts of A Music of Ribs in Miracle Monocle.

Attention schools and businesses: for discounted copies on large orders, please contact the publisher directly.

For information contact:

Unsolicited Press

Portland, Oregon

www.unsolicitedpress.com

[e-mail]

619-354-8005

Cover Design: Kathryn Gerhardt

Editor: Kristen Marckmann

In Water Signs, Liz Kellebrew reflects on her coastal landscape and the natural and unnatural ways we inhabit our lives. Humorous, illuminating, and unafraid to peel back the complicated layers of living, this collection probes as much as it cradles. Kellebrew asks, How does one cope with the uncertainty? Her answers are manifold and, ultimately, hopeful. Extend that love to yourself: make your heart a homestead.

— Jessica Gigot, author of Feeding Hour

Lithe as shoreline madronas, Liz Kellebrew’s poems navigate the Salish Sea in reflections on nature, everyday solitude, and a changing environment. Effortless imagery pairs with staunch insights to create a mesmerizing read.

—Gail Folkins, author of Light in the Trees

In Water Signs, a startling, heartfelt, and brave catalogue of the world around us, Liz Kellebrew echoes Mary Oliver’s instructions: To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work. Whether describing the feral beauty of a post-apocalyptic landscape, taking inventory of her surroundings, or playing with the trope of a midlife crisis, Kellebrew's language is lush and unrelenting, praising the clutter of human life as it intersects with natural world: The sticky residue on a galley table, spilled juice or sticky bun. Scratched enamel, graffiti of keys, and Sweetgum seeds cluster in fractals,/ Spiny urchins ambitious as globes. The result is a voice tender as it is stoic, reminding us that there are, No predators here but us.

— Kendra DeColo, author of My Dinner with Ron Jeremy

Contents

Contents

Genesis

Pre:incarnation

Curvature

Ferry Crossing: Spring

Hydrophilic Age

Id

Equinox

The Artist’s Garden

Essential Activities

Hunter

Summer Grocery Receipt

Spring at the Alehouse

Responsibility

You, Too, Are Worthy

Smith Cove

Forecasts

We Are Now Arriving in Seattle

Forge

Midlife Crises

A Strategy for Coping

Wait for It

Immortality

Surface Tension

Clearing

Permamelt

Heave

Primordial Compost

Summer, Eagle Harbor

Suspicious Activity

Thoreau as a Post-postmodern Woman

Finn’s First Ecstasy

Gideon Park

Downhome

Unpaid Overtime

The Ophthalmologist Asks If I’m from Arizona

The Problem with Stories

Apokalypsis: an unveiling, a revelation

Finn in the Rain

Reviews for Water Signs

[Tim Kavi · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Reading Liz Kellebrew's "Water Signs" is like taking a breath of fresh air as you leave the urban landscapes behind, realizing it is salt air, and being hit on all sides in a tour de force of all your senses in a fully lived-out reminder of all that is human, animal, and spirit all at once. It is an inner seeing of your own totem. And it is a beacon of hope, reminding us that Nature is there if we but look, and a ferry ride is a mahayana to the next coastline that is not a line at all. It is an outer look too, a reminder that Nature is only a breath away whether we are in the city, the country, in our minds, or in our community. If we dare to look! It is calling us to a faraway home, while it is our very heart at the doorstep of its arrival. It is my own struggle for connection, and yet, finding it again and again. If we but wake up and sing among lilacs with a plywood guitar, everything new is there for us to wake up to and find joy upon our waking. I'm amazed, gobsmacked, and in quiet reverence all at the same time. Then comes along another one of her poems! Liz, thanks for sharing your very heart with the rest of us!--Tim Kavi, author of Ascending Goddess.